History on Bread

People have been making bread for thousand of years as a necessity. Now we make homemade bread for the joy of have fresh made bread. I just started making bread for my family this year. I have a bread maker that I got for Christmas one year and it has been sitting for a while. I been feeling guilty not using it so I decide it would be great to start making bread every week.




There is a history about bread from wikipedia. These are some of the parts I thought were interesting on the page.


"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 ground cereal grains and water, and may have been developed by accidental cooking or deliberate experimentation with water and grain flour."


"Even within antiquity there was a wide variety of bread available. In the Deipnosophistae, the Greek author Athenaeus describes some of the bread, cakes, cookies, and pastries available in the Classical world. Among the bread mentioned are griddle cakes, honey-and-oil bread, mushroom shaped loaves covered in poppy seeds, and the military specialty of rolls baked on a spit. The type and quality of flour used to produce bread could also vary as noted by Diphilus when he declared "bread made of wheat, as compared with that made of barley, is more nourishing, more digestible, and in every way superior.""


"For generations, white bread was the preferred bread of the rich while the poor ate dark bread. However, in most western societies, the connotations reversed in the late 20th century with dark (whole grain) bread becoming preferred as having superior nutritional value while white bread became associated with lower-class ignorance of nutrition."

Isn't it interesting that white bread was eaten by the rich! I prefer wheat.

There are so many type of bread too: found also on wikipedia.

White bread is made from flour containing only the central core of the grain (endosperm).

Brown bread is made with endosperm and 10% bran. It can also refer to white bread with added colouring (often caramel colouring) to make it 'brown'; commonly labeled in America as "Wheat" bread (as opposed to "Whole Wheat" bread.)

Wholemeal bread contains the whole of the wheat grain (endosperm and bran). It is also referred to as 'whole grain' or 'whole wheat' bread, especially in North America.

Wheat germ bread has added wheat germ for flavoring.

Whole grain bread can refer to the same as 'wholemeal bread', or to white bread with addedwhole grains to increase its fibre content (i.e. as in "60% whole grain bread").

Roti is a whole wheat based bread eaten in South Asia. Naan is also a variant of Roti.

Granary bread is bread made from granary flour. Trademarked to Hovis, it is made from malted white or brown flour, wheat germ and whole grains.

Rye bread is made with flour from rye grain of variable levels. It is higher in fiber than many common types of bread and is often darker in color and stronger in flavor. In Scandinavia, Germany, Finland, the Baltic States, and Russia, rye is a popular type of bread.