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Bread

Bread has a long history dating back 30,000 years when evidence of starch residue was found on rocks used for pounding plants. Around 10,000 BC during the Neolithic age, as agriculture spread, grains became the main ingredient in bread. One of the earliest forms of leavened bread was baked in Mesopotamia around 6000 BC using yeast, and the Egyptians later refined bread making by adding yeast to flour. Various cultures developed different methods of leavening including using beer foam, grape juice mixtures, or retaining dough from the previous day.

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29 views2 pages

Bread

Bread has a long history dating back 30,000 years when evidence of starch residue was found on rocks used for pounding plants. Around 10,000 BC during the Neolithic age, as agriculture spread, grains became the main ingredient in bread. One of the earliest forms of leavened bread was baked in Mesopotamia around 6000 BC using yeast, and the Egyptians later refined bread making by adding yeast to flour. Various cultures developed different methods of leavening including using beer foam, grape juice mixtures, or retaining dough from the previous day.

Uploaded by

giberozashvili
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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read is one of the oldest prepared foods.

Evidence from 30,000 years ago in Europe


and Australia revealed starch residue on rocks used for pounding plants.[1][2] It
is possible that during this time, starch extract from the roots of plants, such as
cattails and ferns, was spread on a flat rock, placed over a fire and cooked into a
primitive form of flatbread. The oldest evidence of bread-making has been found in
a 14,500-year-old Natufian site in Jordan's northeastern desert.[3][4] Around
10,000 BC, with the dawn of the Neolithic age and the spread of agriculture, grains
became the mainstay of making bread. Yeast spores are ubiquitous, including on the
surface of cereal grains, so any dough left to rest leavens naturally.[5]

Woman baking bread (circa 2200 BC); Louvre


An early leavened bread was baked as early as 6000 BC in southern Mesopotamia,
cradle of the Sumerian civilization, who may have passed on the knowledge to the
Egyptians around 3000 BC. The Egyptians refined the process and started adding
yeast to the flour. The Sumerians were already using ash to supplement the dough as
it was baked.[6]

There were multiple sources of leavening available for early bread. Airborne yeasts
could be harnessed by leaving uncooked dough exposed to air for some time before
cooking. Pliny the Elder reported that the Gauls and Iberians used the foam skimmed
from beer, called barm, to produce "a lighter kind of bread than other peoples"
such as barm cake. Parts of the ancient world that drank wine instead of beer used
a paste composed of grape juice and flour that was allowed to begin fermenting, or
wheat bran steeped in wine, as a source for yeast. The most common source of
leavening was to retain a piece of dough from the previous day to use as a form of
sourdough starter, as Pliny also reported.[7][8]

The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all considered the degree of refinement
in the bakery arts as a sign of civilization.[6]

The Chorleywood bread process was developed in 1961; it uses the intense mechanical
working of dough to dramatically reduce the fermentation period and the time taken
to produce a loaf. The process, whose high-energy mixing allows for the use of
grain with a lower protein content, is now widely used around the world in large
factories. As a result, bread can be produced very quickly and at low costs to the
manufacturer and the consumer. However, there has been some criticism of the effect
on nutritional value.[9][10][11]

Types
Main article: List of breads

Brown bread (left) and whole grain bread

Dark sprouted bread

Ruisreikäleipä, a flat rye flour loaf with a hole


Bread is the staple food of the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, Europe,
and in European-derived cultures such as those in the Americas, Australia, and
Southern Africa. This is in contrast to parts of South and East Asia, where rice or
noodles are the staple. Bread is usually made from a wheat-flour dough that is
cultured with yeast, allowed to rise, and baked in an oven. Carbon dioxide and
ethanol vapors produced during yeast fermentation result in bread's air pockets.
[12] Owing to its high levels of gluten (which give the dough sponginess and
elasticity), common or bread wheat is the most common grain used for the
preparation of bread, which makes the largest single contribution to the world's
food supply of any food.[13]
Sangak, an Iranian flatbread

Strucia — a type of European sweet bread


Bread is also made from the flour of other wheat species (including spelt, emmer,
einkorn and kamut).[14] Non-wheat cereals including rye, barley, maize (corn),
oats, sorghum, millet and rice have been used to make bread, but, with the
exception of rye, usually in combination with wheat flour as they have less gluten.
[15]

Gluten-free breads are made using flours from a variety of ingredients such as
almonds, rice, sorghum, corn, legumes such as beans, and tubers such as cassava.
Since these foods lack gluten, dough made from them may not hold its shape as the
loaves rise, and their crumb may be dense with little aeration. Additives such as
xanthan gum, guar gum, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC), corn starch, or eggs
are used to compensate for the lack of gluten.[16][17][18][19]

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