Ancient Foods – Bread Part 1

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus said in the Bible. “If the people have no bread, let them eat cake,” is one of the many things that Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France, remains known for until today. That and of course the fact that she was sent to the guillotine. Throughout history, bread has been symbolic of trust, care and then also conflict and treason. In our modern society, the viewpoints on bread are as controversial. We are still a society divided by poverty and those below the bread line, those just above the breadline and of course also those who are not even aware of the fact that there is a breadline. Bread symbolizes different things to different people. However, bread has been a stable and consistent food source in history. How far back in history, we often don’t even realize though.

Bread is the staple food in Central Asia, North America, Europe, the Middle East and most European-derived cultures located in the Americas, Southern Africa and even Australia. While most of us know that bread has been around for almost as long as that civilization has been around, the idea of how ancient bread and the art of baking perfect bread is, seldom crosses the mind when we bite into the perfect panini or have a sarmie with our favourite fillings on the go.

Thus, it might come as a surprise that the art of bread making is dating back as far as 9000 BC. During these early years, bread was baked on hot stones and it contained no yeast. It was around 5000 BC when the Egyptians stumbled by accident on the fermentation process. A piece of dough made of barley and millet became sour and they discovered yeast, the magic ingredient that makes bread so soft and fluffy and as we still enjoy in the best-baked goodies today.

Not only does the Bible refer to bread in symbolic terms, but it is also important to take note that when the Hebrews fled Egypt, they had to do it in such a rush that they didn’t even have time to take leaven with them. It is why unleavened bread is today still symbolic of this event. This unleavened bread has evolved and today the term Matzo might be more familiar to you, the modern bread enthusiast.

As civilization spread across the globe, the Greeks also took on bread making and their preferred choice of flour was rye or oats and to a lesser degree, wheat. They would rely on hot grids and even primitive ovens to bake bread. The next great step in the development of bread was when the Romans opted to add poppy seeds or herbs like fennel, parsley and cumin to their bread dough.

Throughout the history of bread, there were always several factors that contributed to the development of bread. These factors are the type of flour used and how the bread was baked. The Romans opted for their conventional household ovens which they built from clay bricks, to bake their bread in.

While the foundation of bread was now strong, it was still merely only the start of many more changes to shape this basic staple. It was in Spain that they first managed to grind flour with hand querns until it was a fine powder, delivering a final product that is much closer to what we are familiar with today. Another first in this historical journey came from the Gauls. They were the first to knead their bread until it has risen and this resulted in much lighter and far less dense bread.

By now, bread was quite widely known and eaten. Eating bread enjoyed another push, propelling the world of bread with so much momentum that bread is still part of the modern-day diet. This force, taking breadmaking to the next level took place in the Middle Ages. Now breadmaking transformed into the bakery trade. You would find tradesmen who would focus only on mastering the process of making bread and as a result, various kinds of bread became available. These early-day bakers experimented with different types of flours and baking methods and soon their clientele had a selection of bread to choose from. However, being a society that was divided according to class, it was a division also present in the types of bread on offer. The selection consisted of the following:

• Queen’s bread was a soft and rich bread and the ingredient list included milk and egg yolks
• Hall bread was the type you would serve only to your most distinguished guests
• Hulled bread had bran as the main ingredient and this was mainly intended for the working class and would be something you would give to your servants to eat.
• Wholemeal bread would have a hard-baked crust and this would be kept for bread crumbs
• Trencher bread was often served as plates for different types of meat and was something to be served to the homeless or fed to the dogs.

Other bread types that were available during this period were:

• German wheat bread that had a light crumb
• Chapter bread was extremely flat and hard
• Variegated bread contained layers of brown and white bread intertwined
• Gonesse and Melun bread were very fine and white and were something you could only find at the best bakeries.

What is your favourite type of bread? Watch out for part 2 in this section on bread, part of a series on ancient foods, where we will learn about how a new approach to fermentation transformed the process of making bread in the 17^th century.