Bread
3,000 B.C - It was believed that the ancient Egyptians were the first to make raised bread using only fermented flour, water and a natural wild yeast which was present in the air they also developed ovens where several loaves could be baked off the same time.
Bread for the rich was made from wheat flour, middle classes had barley and for the less fortunate, the poor their bread was made from a grain called sorghum. The workers who built the Egyptian pyramids were paid in bread.
It was not until the 1800’s yeast was recognized as a plant like organism. Yeast converts carbohydrates into alcohol which produced carbon dioxide therefore becomes a leavening gas.
By 1850 the United States had 2,017 bakeries employing over 6,700 workers.
1930 / 1940 a diet enrichment program in the United States stipulated that adequate amounts of iron, thiamin, niacin & riboflavin were to be added to the flour for bread, in 1998 folic acid was also added to enriched grain foods these vitamins which are essential to our daily diet requirements and reduce diseases such as anemia, birth defects and others.
Why eat bread? Bread is a great source of carbohydrates we need carbohydrates to give us energy it’s full of some of the daily required vitamins which we do need.
Bread is so unbelievably versatile from a slice of toast for breakfast to wholesome filled sandwiches a meal on its own,hot or cold, most of us love to dunk crusty bread in a bowl of homemade soup. Use it as a scoop for dips, then to turn a regular baguette in to garlic bread- just so amazing! and what about a wonderfully large luscious hunk of bread thickly hand sliced with the aroma of freshly baked bread infused in to the air, all around you and company. A handsomely prepared European or domestic cheese platter served at room temperature an array of continental cold meat such as procutto, black forest ham, pastrami basically which ever contents your taste buds. Crispy! crunchy!, juicy grapes… and that special bottle of wine to compliment the meal.. And more so the bread too! Mmmm. Have you ever noticed how many people nibble on bread perhaps after the feast not because there still hungry, but it does actually cleanse the pallet but a “quality” bread will always make people go back for more, simply because it’s not meat its not cheese or whatever else there is, “its bread - it’s clean.”