Two big takeaways. First, and this is truly huge, this paper seems to prove that wheat and barley were sifted through multiple sieves. It is not news that Neolithic breads were sifted — but the analysis of the phytoliths, hard structures found in grasses — have wear patterns indicative of multiple sifting as in first the large bran is sifted out of the whole meal, then what fell through the sieve is re-sifted into a fine sieve, which subjects some of the flour to a second pass through the sieve. Sifting and re-sifting is how different flour grades are made. Based on this study we ask the question, what grades of flour were Late Neolithic Mesopotamian bakers working with?

The second big takeaway for me is that breads were baked in baking dishes and that some had enough fat in the dough to leave lipids in the baking dish. Inspired by this article I put duck fat that I had in my refrigerator into a batch of flatbreads. Delicious. A reminder that bread recipes have gone beyond flour, water, and optional leavening ore millennia. Experiment!

To get the most out of this article I advise downloading and then uploading to an AI engine, like DeepSeek or Perplexicity.ai, my two favorites. Once attached to the query form you can ask questions of the article which is how I now find I am getting the most out of papers like this.

And, you are with, there is relationship between the breads deserved and a “focaccia.”