Story of Bread – LS9

Bread is a staple food prepared by cooking a dough of flour and water and possibly more ingredients. Doughs are usually baked, but in some cuisines breads are steamed, fried, or baked on an unoiled skillet. It may be leavened or unleavened. Salt, fat and leavening agents such as yeast and baking soda are common ingredients, though bread may contain other ingredients, such as milk, egg, sugar, spice, fruit (such as raisins), vegetables (such as onion), nuts (such as walnuts) or seeds (such as poppy seeds). Bread is one of the oldest prepared foods, dating back to the Neolithic era. The development of leavened bread can probably also be traced to prehistoric times.
Fresh bread is prized for its taste, aroma, quality and texture. Retaining its freshness is important to keep it appetizing. Bread that has stiffened or dried past its prime is said to be stale. Modern bread is sometimes wrapped in paper or plastic film, or stored in a container such as a breadbox to reduce drying. Bread that is kept in warm, moist environments is prone to the growth of mold. Bread kept at low temperatures, in a refrigerator for example, will develop mold growth more slowly than bread kept at room temperature, but will turn stale quickly due to retrogradation.
The soft, inner part of bread is known to bakers and other culinary professionals as the crumb, which is not to be confused with small bits of bread that often fall off, called crumbs. The outer hard portion of bread is called the crust.


Bread is one of the oldest prepared foods, dating back to the Neolithic era. The first bread produced was probably cooked versions of a grain-paste, made from roasted and ground cereal grains and water, and may have been developed by accidental cooking or deliberate experimentation with water and grain flour. Descendants of this early bread are still commonly made from various grains in many parts of the world, including lavashs, taboons, sangaks, Mexican tortilla, Indian chapatis, rotis and naans, Scottish oatcake, North American johnnycake, Middle Eastern pita, and Eritrean injera. Flat bread of these types also formed a staple in the diet of many early civilizations with the Sumerians eating a type of barley flat cake, and the 12th century BC Egyptians being able to purchase a flat bread called ta from stalls in the village streets. The ritual bread in ancient Greek offerings to the chthonic gods, known as psadista was made of fine flour, oil and wine
The accidental discovery of fermented bread is attributed to the Egyptians, who used the leaven of soured dough left over from previous baking and the must of grapes kneaded with flour and dried in the sun Leavening changed the character of bread as it had been known from a hard, flat, roasted product it became a light airy loaf of bread. To improve the retention of carbon dioxide and add to the expanding of the load while baking, the Egyptians also developed an oven. There are now almost 100 types of bread baked in Egypt today.
In some areas of Africa bread has been known for 6,000 years and yet in other areas bread has only recently been introduced. The milling and baking methods of today’s Bedouin are rather primitive while the Libyans eat mainly European bread of the French and Italian types. However, during religious festivals the Arabic Balady bread is baked. Introduction of bread to West African countries is relatively new. “Sugar bread” and “butter bread” are quite popular. The bread consumed in cities of South Africa resembles closely that consumed in Western countries. Only in the past century has the bakery trade been established in Israel. In times past, people in towns prepared bread at home and brought their molded loaves to a public oven for custom baking. In villages, every family had its own oven.
In travelling through the country in Arab villages on may see what may appear to be small huts built of clay with low entrance doors. During the morning hours smoke may be observed rising from small holes and clefts in the walls of the hut. The hut is actually an oven called a “tarboon” which is being heated and prepared for bread baking. This is the oven of the “fellahin” or settled peasants. It consists of a cupola of burnt clay, about 3 feet in diameter with a hole on top which can be closed with a lid. The floor of the interior, or hearth, is covered with a layer of pebbles for better conservation of heat. When the fire has burned down ashes and cinders are heaped around the outside to keep the heat in and the oven is then ready for baking. During the previous evening a soft dough has been prepared and left to rest overnight. A piece of old dough may be used as ferment but compressed yeast is becoming more popular. After fermenting, the dough is shaped by hand into flat round loaves and immediately put into the oven. The oven is loaded several times through the hole in the top baking 6 to 8 loaves at one time. Bread of the first batch being exposed to flash heat is sometimes burned while the inside of the loaf is still insufficiently baked. The bread has a thin soft crust indented on the bottom from resting on pebbles while baking.
The Greeks also made bread without leaven by using grape juice as ferment. Leavened bread was a delicacy reserved for special feasts. It was made from wheat barley, or millet. The art of bread making was highly developed with numerous types of bread available. Bread was important in the culture and religion of the Romans. They developed large commercial bakeries in the 2nd Century B.C. to meet demands of increasing bread consumption. The masters of bread making were Greeks who established a flourishing milling and baking industry; but the Romans carried bread making wherever they went in Europe.
In the Early Middle Ages loaves were round or semicircular and flat and were marked with a cross, a Christian symbol that made it easier to break the loaf. White bread continued to be a delicacy. Best bread was made in the monasteries. n the 9th and 10th Centuries some monasteries produced several types of bread including unleavened, regular leavened bread made of wheat, spelt bread, bread baked in ashed, ring-shaped rolls, moon-shaped confectionery of fine wheat flour, roasted bread, wafers, and special breads