Bush bread
Bush bread is called bush bread or seedcakes in Australia . It is a bread- like food that the Aborigines have made for many thousands of years. High in protein and carbohydrates, this bread is part of the traditional Australian Aboriginal diet that is extremely healthy.
With the conquest of Australia by the Europeans, who brought the white finely ground flour with them, the traditional way of baking bread was gradually ended. Aboriginal women reported making seed cakes in Central Australia until the 1970s . The tradition of baking bread on hot coals is currently being revived in Australia.
Making bread from seeds
Collecting seeds
The seeds vary according to the season and the areas in which the Aboriginal peoples lived: In Central Australia , millet ( Panicum decompositum ; Panicum australianse ) and spinifex ( Triodia plant genus ) were commonly used. Acacia seeds (Wattleseed) could also be added to the flour.
Women harvested all the grain that had ripened on the stalk and dried the plant seeds. They beat the grass or trees with sticks to harvest the seeds. Some species could be eaten green and, if pressed, the juice from them could be drunk right on the millstone. Making bread was a labor-intensive task of the Aboriginal women, which was done collectively. The gathering of seasonal grains, roots and nuts was communal; then they had to be ground into flour, kneaded into a dough in a further process and then baked.
Another innovation took place in the Kimberley region of Western Australia : It was observed that ants were collecting seeds, peeling them and sowing them. These grains could now be harvested relatively easily by the Aborigines and, after drying, ground into flour.
Other seeds that were used were summer purslane (English: Pigweed) ( Portulaca oleracea ), Prickly wattle ( Acacia victoriae ), Mulga ( Acacia aneura ), Dead finish ( Acacia tetragonophylla ), French bean ( Rhyncharrhena linearis ).
Flour production
After the grain was collected, the grain had to be threshed, this was done with a so-called Coolamon , a multifunctional container. Sometimes the grain had to be threshed several times.
If the grain was available, a millstone was needed to grind it. Millstones have been discovered that are around 50,000 years old. The flour was mixed with water to make a dough. He was then placed on hot ashes. The result could be narrow rolls, now known in Australia as Johnny Cake , or large loaves, now called damper . Damper is a mix of traditional and European bread baking.
The dough could also be eaten raw. Baked bread was an optimal food for a traveling group when staying in the wild for some time because it did not spoil quickly and was easy to transport.
Making bread from other plant products
Bread could also be baked from roots and tubers. At the top end of Australia, the Yolngu aborigines used the roots of the lotus flower and the starchy root tuber of the wild taro . They mixed these into a paste from which they baked bread.
Bread made from the seed of the water lily was common at the top end. The two species of water lily that were used were the Nelumbo nucifera and Nymphaea macrosperma .
At the beginning of the dry season, water lily seeds were an important part of the diet, eaten raw with the seed pod or mixed into the batter.
Women had special knowledge of how to make food from plants toxic-free. The seeds of the cycad palm ( Cycas media ) are highly carcinogenic when raw and they require elaborate handling such as beating, mashing, and leaching in running water for five days before boiling. After this process, they were baked into thin loaves that could be stored for several weeks.
In Queensland , the Aborigines at Mount Tamborine used the cone-like nut of the bunya pine , which is endemic to the area , to make bread the above trail.
Dream time
In the Dreamtime Aboriginal the bush bread plays an important role. It was an essential part of the diet of these peoples. The bush-bread dreaming, for example, is portrayed in a traditional way by the painter Rachel Rennie in connection with the ants that collect the seeds. The dreamtime stories were narrated by her father and relatives.
Barbara Weir is an Aboriginal artist from the artist colony Utopia , who is dedicated to grass-seed dreaming with warm and earthy colors. She presents her pictures as moving grass in modern colors and calls them “light over utopia”.
Burke and Wills
Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills , explorers in early Australia, survived for some time in the wilderness during their expedition after their food rations ran out thanks to bush bread. The Yandruwandha -Aborigines on Cooper Creek gave them fish and beans, "padlu" are called, and they made bread from the ground seeds of Nardoo -Pflanze ( Marsilea drummondii ).
It is believed today that the Nardoo plants were also a reason for their death. Wills's last entry in his diary contained the following:
"... starvation on nardoo is by no means very unpleasant, but for the weakness one feels, and the utter inability to move oneself, for as far as appetite is concerned, it gives me the greatest satisfaction. Certainly, fat and sugar would be more to one's taste, in fact, those seem to me to be the great stand by for one in this extraordinary continent; not that I mean to depreciate the farinacious food, but the want of sugar and fat in all substances obtainable here is so great that they become almost valueless to us as articles of food, without the addition of something else ... "
“… The starvation caused by Nardoo is by no means unpleasant, because despite the feeling of weakness and the inability to move, it gives me the greatest satisfaction, especially when it comes to feeling hungry. Certainly fat and sugar would suit the taste better - rather, they seem to me to be the greatest support in this extraordinary continent. Not that I want to devalue farinaceous food - but due to the immense desire for sugar and fat in all the substances available here, it becomes almost meaningless for us as a food unless something else is added ... "
It is likely that when the explorers were making their own bread, they were unable to pretreat and bake it like the Aborigines did. The soaked seeds must first be rubbed in order to remove the thiaminase , which removes the vital vitamin B1 from the body . It is therefore likely that Burke and Wills' deaths were related to some form of beriberi , a vitamin deficiency disease.
literature
- Nicholas Peterson: Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land. Melbourne University Press, Carlton 2004, ISBN 0-522-85063-4 .
Web links
- Aboriginal Art with Bush Bread Dreaming
- Aboriginal Art with Grass Seed Dreaming
- Aboriginal technology
Individual evidence
- ↑ Food Standards Australia New Zealand: Online Version. ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Rachel Rennie: Pictures of Bush Bread Dreaming. Retrieved June 5, 2009.
- ^ Barbara Weir: Light over Utopia. Retrieved June 5, 2009.
- ↑ Calder Chaffey: A Fern which Changed Australian History. (No longer available online.) In: Australian Plants online. Association of Societies for Growing Australian Plants, June 2002, archived from the original on February 1, 2014 ; Retrieved April 12, 2008 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
