Books: Fifty Foods that Changed the Course of History by Bill Price

Bread. And the history of it. 

Origins? Wherever people have lived
Date? At least 30,000 years ago
Type? It's a cooked dough of flour and water

It has cultural, social, commercial and political involvement throughout history.

'If one food can be said to have been more closely involved with human history than any other, then it must surely be bread.'

Gluten: 'By kneading bread dough, bakers create links between the proteins in the wheat flour to form the composite molecule gluten. It is an elastic molecule so when carbon dioxide is released it stretches allowing the bread to rise.'

'It has been a staple of our diet for thousands of years and is now eaten in almost every culture.'
This beggars the question as to why gluten (a component in flour) is such a problem now when it hasn't bothered the human race for thousands of years, even to the point of it being incorporated into every culture. This shows that it must be due to the mass production in later years as bread was often made daily and consumed that day, made from hand and baked by a baker whereas now bread is mass  produced with long shelf lives it has taken out the organic nature of bread making leading to questions of what is actually in it.

Due to the key components being so widely available it has allowed people from various different places to make breads in unique ways such as naans in India and all the way to baguettes in France.

'Human beings are not adapted to eat grass; our stomachs are too small to digest it properly and, in any case, our large brains require more energy than we can derive from it. Paradoxically, various types of grass provide us with the style foods many of us eat every day. Wheat, rice and corn, to name only the most common, are all grasses and the reason why these have become so important to us as foodstuffs, despite all being largely indigestible in their raw state, is, of course, because we have developed methods of processing and cooking the most nutritious parts, the seed grains, to unlock the store of energy contained within.'

Biologist Richard Wrangham > 'cooking is one of the main driving forces behind human evolution' > 'increase in brain size due to greater amount of energy made available to us in food when it is cooked.

'One of the earliest forms of processed food is bread, made from grinding and cooking grains.'
The process of making bread through stones to grind the grains had been carbon dated to 30,000 BP even though it is suggested it is much older and some suggest that that ability goes all the way back to our distant ancestor the Homo erectus who emerged about 2 million years ago in Africa.

As discussed in this book bread and the technology in which it developed from grain to a food source has parallels throughout the evolution of the modern day humans as they transitioned from hunter-gatherers to settling in what was known as the Fertile Crescent in the modern day Middle East. This transition largely happened due to the gatherers adopting a sedentary lifestyle in which they grew their own crops, possibly one of the first few would have been the wheat grain leading to it being such a staple. As they discovered seasons they also used to store their grains to last throughout the winter which is where the name Granary came from.

As they learned to cultivate the wild ancestors of modern wheat varieties such as einkorn and emmer which grew naturally where they settled they began to select the seeds which had the best characteristics for growth and plentifulness and therefore planted those in order to increase reliability for the next years crop.

What was the first kind of bread being introduced?
Similar to flatbreads found in the Middle East.
'It is also possible that leavened breads were being baked, an innovation that may have occurred as a consequence of naturally occurring yeast spores getting into the dough so that, when it was cooked, it would have risen.

Bread also played a large part in early communication as the surplus produced by farming was recorded onto clay tablets through making impressions of the items which is where we got the 'bundles of wheat' imagery from, which was recorded as one of the earliest known forms of writing. From this it also produced jobs for people of cities such as bakers which was considered an art form.

Sourdough
'Rather than the alcoholic fermentation which occurs when yeast is used in bread-making to make the dough rise, the sourdough method involves a lactic fermentation.'

'The relationship between bread and brewing is a very long one, persisting up to the 19th century when cultivated bread yeast became available for the first time and it remained typical throughout the history of bread-making up until then for bakeries to be located next t breweries in order to make use of the brewer's yeast.

Historical Context:
The Bibles connotations of bread making

'When Moses led the Children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, the Book of Exodus tell us that they left in such a hurry that there was no time to wait for bread to bake and they left without the leaven used to make it rise. They existed on unleavened bread during this time. This is the origin of Jewish tradition of eating 'matzo' made only from flour and water during the festival of Passover and before the seven days of the decimal has begun they cleanse their houses of any food containing leavening.'

'According to one interpretation of the biblical Israelites' journey into the wilderness' the unleavened bread fastest much longer than the leavened bread without going stale much like hardtack was used to provision military campaigns and long sea journeys in more recent years.'

Bread in this religious time holds great importance in the Jewish tradition and matzo is made weeks in advance to the period of Passover and baked quickly to prevent rising. They also use the bread to tell the story of their suffering by placing it on the first day of Passover at the ritual feast amongst other foods that represent their struggles such as parsley or celery symbolising the hopes of the Israelites in Egypt.

In the Christian ritual of Eucharist, bread also plays a large role when representing Christ's body and relating it to the Last Supper where he had broke the bread and shared it with his disciples

The social implications of bread
shortages of food/rise in the cost of food suddenly = civil unrest

1780s France:
After a number of bad harvests the price of wheat went sky high resulting in people going hungry. Although the 1789 French Revolution was largely to do with unrest and dissatisfaction in the middle-classes there was also factors of equality and republicanism and enlightenment from seeing hungry mobs on the streets.

2011s Arab Spring:
Extreme weather in Australia, Russia and Pakistan over the course of a year had a dramatic impact on the wheat harvest resulting in a higher price for the commodity putting pressure on poorer countries in the Middle East such as Tunisia, Egypt and spreading throughout the region as they import the majority of their bread and are therefore vulnerable. This notion was articulated by the Egyptian protestors 'Bread. Freedom. Justice.' As well as protesting about the rise in bread prices this was coupled up with civil unrest under radical regimes.
This extremism was sparked by the death of a Tunisian man on a street as a vendor who in order to protest against these mistreatments he has experienced set himself on fire.

From this segment of the book I have learned that bread plays such a fundamental part in our society and our genetic make-up that it is integral to keep in our diets. However, due to the technology of making bread making it become more readily available and for longer it has taken away the core structure of what bread symbolised all those years ago. I think it is important to 'go back to the drawing board' and make links with what was acceptably consumed then and why it isn't now and what can be done to stop it. Although the gluten-free bread market is still expanding I feel there is more research needed into what the modern day causes are as this has not always been an issue in society. I feel that one solution of this could be encouraging people to make fresh bread through cooking lessons/getting famous chefs on board which as research would find is acceptable for gluten intolerant/coeliacs to consume. The final way to eradicate this intolerance is making a stand against the mass consumption of bread and encouraging producers to use new technologies with old style simple production methods.