We have stopped travelling and wandering the globe (just for now) and are getting back to the basics.
From what I can see, almost everyone seems to be hunkering down at home and learning the wonderfully satisfying craft of baking – and I am so proud of you! From complex sourdoughs to banana bread and simple scones, bread, in any form is a true joy to make and a delight to eat.
Credit; Amaia Arranz-Ortaegui (npr.org)
An Everyday Staple - Bread
Bread has walked hand in hand with humans for over 14,000 years. The 2018 discovery of charred bread found at the site of Natufians in Northeastern Jordon revealed that these hunter-gatherer people settled down to make bread with wild cereals prior to exploring farming.
The Natufian culture existed in Epipaleolithic times, a period which rested in between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic eras. It was within the Neolithic period that the first agricultural revolution took place and people started to settle and farm rather than wander the land for food
Artisan Bread
Sourdough and artisan breads are products that people are now making and eating more of. We are embracing the technique of making our own leaveners which can be traced back to the ancient Egyptians who were also into beer brewing as depicted in paintings of that time. The story of the original creation of sourdough loosely talks about dough being left out as wild yeast in the air drifted into the mix. The bread baked from this dough was lighter, fluffier and tasted better.
A simple starter or sponge of flour and water, time and tangy fermentation are the building blocks of a naturally leavened bread. Throughout the world many cultures have been fermenting dough with local grains long before it was documented such as injera of Ethiopia made with fermented teff flour and kisra, a Sudanese bread made from fermented sorghum.
The process of bread making journeyed from Egypt to Greece, whose cuisine comprises of over 70 different types of bread both sweet and savoury, made from a variety of grains. The Greeks were the first real artisan bakers and bread was and is such a strong part of their culture.
As with many skills and ideas, the Romans learnt the art of bread making from the Greeks and mastered the art of kneading and developing new baking techniques, including the fermentation of grape juice, skins and all, which sped up the fermentation process.
Female Bakers, Thebes, Boetia, 6th Century BC (Louvre, Paris)
Credit; Bridgeman Images/Greece-is.com
Leading up to the discovery of yeast and how it reacted, barm, a foam that forms on the top of beer during fermentation was included in the process of baking bread, acting as a leavener and cutting down some time as opposed to making a starter from scratch. Bakers could not always be reliant on breweries for their barm so continued to make sourdough. In Austria, mass-produced yeast was developed by chemists, taken from the tops of fermenting brew, washed, dried and then pressed into cakes. Unfortunately, shortcuts were made and the product became bulked up with fillers.
The Invention of Dried Yeast
Charles Fleischmann and his brother Maximillian who were managing their family’s distillery in Vienna, travelled to the United States with a baker’s yeast they had been working on.
The brothers paired with James Gaff, a local distiller, to found the Fleischmann Yeast Company, based in Cincinnati in 1868. The yeast was compressed into small ready to use cakes and wrapped in foil. This was the beginning of the worlds first commercialized yeast that allowed people to bake with more consistency and less time.
The development of fresh yeast available to all was an achievement but the invention of dried yeast was a revolution. This new Active Dry Yeast did not need refrigeration and proved to come in handy for the US troops during WWII, enabling them to make their own bread in a small amount of time.
Fleischmann’s Yeast Poster
Credit; Science History Institute
The convenience of baking a faster-rising loaf of bread was a genius invention however did eventually lead to the downfall of quality nutrient-dense bread. Originally, flour was made by stone grinding the whole wheat kernel, resulting in whole wheat flour that contained the bran, germ and endosperm This flour was then simply sifted to remove any larger particles. The development of the steel roller mill sped up the process of milling wheat, however with this new process, the grain was separated resulting in a less nutritionally dense flour. It was a fast and efficient way to make larger volumes of flour and coincided with the Industrial Revolution of the 1900s.
Commercial Bakery.
Photograph: Fritz Goro/LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Photograph: Fritz Goro/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images/TheGuardian)
With the lack of nutrition in this mass-produced flour, artificial vitamins and minerals were then added after it had been processed. The industrialization of bread was a lengthy development, facing the challenge of creating a stable food product that could last for more than a few days. Enter the introduction of chemicals and stabilisers to our once healthy loaf of bread. With loaves of bread all white, sliced, and readily available, people stopped baking at home and started buying this ‘enriched bread’ along with those horrid yet ingenious TV dinners.
Image; The Bakehaus, Singapore
However, all is not lost. We are turning back to old school traditions and hopefully realizing that food is the key to disease prevention and the cheapest medicine one can find. Sourdough is now trendy again - more than ever, but it can come at a high price if you compare it to your average loaf of bread at the market, yet it is higher in nutrition due to the long fermentation process and is much more satisfying to eat and digest.
Good sourdough takes time and effort or money but if you have the budget - it is totally worth it. Check out these The Bakehaus Loaves!!
Time is something we have a lot of these days, so have a go at making a sourdough but but if it seems all to troublesome you can always try baking a regular yeasted loaf with stone milled, organic flour. There are so many simple breads that take an hour or two to make. Like pita bread, damper or even scones - the possibilities really are endless!
Flex your baking skills, explore this extremely therapeutic hobby and always use the best quality flour your budget can allow. It will make all the difference. Honestly, trust me.