The History of Bread

Introduction

Bread has been a part of our diet forever. It is available in every home worldwide, and we have been eating it since we can remember. However, no one knows for sure the origin and history behind bread. The history of bread starts before recorded time.              

Up to 30,000 years ago, people used to collect different types of grain and mix them with water to create porridge. Sometimes they would heat it, making it flat and calling it bread. During that period, the people were nomadic and moved from place to place, looking for sources of food. The men were the hunters, responsible for arranging meat, and the women were responsible for gathering natural produce.

The rise of bread

After the last ice age, approximately 10,000 years ago, the temperature rose, and grass was much easier to find. During that time around the fertile crescent, people realized that if they left the gruel out, it started to bubble for some reason. Now, they could do two things with this mixture. They could either cook it to create a food that can last for days and provide boundless energy, or you could let this cold gruel sit for longer to create a drink that was considered safer than water. Thus, bread and beer were born.

Around 5,000 BC, the Egyptians learned that bread could be made in two ways. One could skim a bit of beer and add it to the flour or save a little bit of the dough each time they make bread and add it the next time. This is what we now call a sourdough starter. People worldwide were trying to figure out which grains could be used to make bread during this time. They used whatever grains they had the most of. In Asia, it was rice, and in the Americas, it was corn. Egypt discovered that one could use grass, which was easy to grow. They discovered this type of bread because the bread made out of grass was very energetic, which was very helpful for the enslaved people as they needed much power to build a gigantic structure. Among the frequently uncovered items in excavations of Egyptian slave quarters, bread baking bowls were predominant.

The Egyptians passed on this bread-making to the ancient Greeks. Even during ancient times, there were various types of bread. By the 5th century BC, bread was being made in both homes and bakeries in Athens. The Greek bakers appeared in Rome in the 2nd century B.C. The Romans were quite fond of bread—so much so that every household received 75 pounds of wheat a month. The main reason was to prevent the people from rebelling against them.

Bread in Rome

The fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity led to the Medieval Ages in Europe. During that time, bread was seen as a status symbol. The wealthy and upper class enjoyed white bread, while the poor only had access to rye or bran bread. At that time, most people were serfs who farmed grain but were forced to give most of it to the lords as taxes. Thus, they were left with a small portion of it, but since they were too poor to build a bread stove, they had to take it to the Lord’s baker to bake bread. However, they used to take a cut from it. By the late 1700s in France, buying bread would use up half of a person’s income. This bread shortage caused 7,000 women to storm Versailles at the kickoff of the French Revolution.

Industrialization in breadmaking

With industrialization, bread-making also progressed. Flour-making mills now work on steam and gas instead of water and wind, and stone grinders are replaced by ceramic and steel counterparts for grinding wheat. In 1912, American inventor and engineer Otto Frederick Rohwedder developed a prototype for slicing bread. A practical machine that sliced and wrapped bread was later developed in 1928. In 1961, the Chorleywood Bread Process was developed. This process is used to control the gasses to reduce the fermentation period and the time taken to make bread. However, doing so harms the taste and nutritional value of bread. Chemical additives were also added to speed up mixing and reduce fermentation time, which further harmed the quality of the bread. Nowadays, as people are more conscious of the contents of their food, many local bakeries are returning to their roots of using sourdough starters to make bread more nutritional.

Conclusion

Bread is a ubiquitous presence on our table, a familiar comfort food enjoyed by an estimated 60% of the world’s population. Yet, beneath this everyday item lies a surprisingly rich history, far grander than we might imagine. The history of bread stretches back millennia, and its history is deeply intertwined with the rise of human civilization.