The bread has roots in a distant past, and people love to use it. Is it only because of its taste, or is there something else? Let’s find out together.
It seems that bread is very important for our body because it gives us strength; it’s keeping us full for hours. Surely you can notice that when you eat light food, like eggs or fruits, you become hungry in two or three hours. That can be very tricky if you need to go to a job and do some hard work. You lose a lot of energy, and you need something strong to keep you in form. Next to simple bread, you can find very healthy and nutritious kinds like keto bread itself.
Three primary innovations that made humanity get from the prehistoric flatbread to fluffy grocery store loaves
- Leavening
Pieces of bread rise into light and fluffy loaves due to leavening. Slices of bread without leavening are known as flatbreads, and they are most closely associated with humans’ first pieces of bread. Examples of such loaves of bread are Indian naan, Central American tortillas, and Middle Eastern Pita.
The most widespread fermentation for bread is baking powder or yeast. Yeast hovers around in the air, searching for an ideal space to convert into a home. The initial leavened pieces of bread were probably the result of some moving yeast forming a home in a gruel bowl.
The yeast ate the grain’s sugars, releasing carbon (IV) oxide and producing bubbles that formed lighter, airier pieces of bread.
- Refined flour
The use of rocks ground the prehistoric bread grains. This grinding resulted in rough whole grain pieces of bread.
The Mesopotamians polished this process during 800 BC. They used two flat, disc-shaped stones piled up on top of each other to crush the grain. Slaves or draft animals frequently rotated the rocks. This process was the genesis of how we produce flour today. It brought about smooth and finely grounded flour that swiftly became valued as a must-have.
The aspiration for the whitest and most refined pieces of bread progressed through contemporary times. Later developments included the sieving of flour to eliminate the bran and germ.
- Mechanized slicing
For thousands of years, the most refined white bread was sold in the whole loaf to split at home. In the nineteenth and first twenty century, magazines and cookbooks provided concrete advice concerning sandwich making.
The pieces of bread were supposed to be split very thinly for women and kids as the crusts are removed. For employees, crusts and thick slices were seen as more appropriate.
However, in 1917, Otto Rohwedder formed the first machine-driven bread slicer. At first, multiple companies believed that housekeepers wouldn’t be fascinated. Hence, this bread-slicing machine wasn’t inaugurated in a manufacturing facility until 1928.
Advancement led to what was meant to be the perfect loaf of bread- ultra-fluffy, white, and sliced into even pieces.
Importance of bread in history
Source of Strength
When you imagine a man and a woman through different periods in history, you picture strong people who had a lot of hard work, carrying heavy objects, building small houses, and everything by hand. They didn’t have any machines to help them, only their strength that comes from food.
Grains were hard and complicated to prepare, so they took their time to think about what to do about it. Then they found a way to use stones to grind them coarsely, and from that process, they collected flour. Mixing it with water and putting on heated stones gave a result of bread. Over time, they realized that this food keeps them full and away from hunger. Today we can find very healthy kinds of bread like keto bread that has a lot of advantages over plain bread for more details please visit here.
Easy to Make
Not having a lot of ingredients at that time was a problem, but having land and growing all kinds of cereals was available. For this food, they didn’t need much water and grains. Women at that time had a lot of jobs around her family. She needed to make food, clothes by herself, wash it when it’s dirty, and still care about a lot of kids. It took a little bit of time to make a meal for the whole family and still be able to do everything else.
Easy to Store over a Year
Most importantly, grains were able to be saved over time and winter when nothing else was growing. In spring and summer, you have a lot of food from nature, but the rest of the year was rough for people through the time, and they were always seeking a functional solution.
Grains could be stored in their original form and also in the form of flour, but it was important not to keep it in a dry area where moist cannot ruin the product.
Part of Culture and Religions
The bread has a variety of meanings and symbolism in a lot of religions, and it’s often mentioned in the Bible and other religious holy books. Believers of Christianity and Judaism believe that bread is a gift from God, and there are Jesus words to confirm that. He said that he could guarantee the one truth. After that, Jesus said that Moses didn’t give people the bread from heaven and that it was a God who gives us the true bread from heaven. Original versus is John 6:32.
As religion is an essential part of human lives, bread being part of religion is important for people. Christians and Jews are using the bread as actual bread in their ceremonies and celebrations as food for the body and as spiritual bread that feeds their spiritual lives.
Conclusion
Behind today’s modern bread, there is a long story of developing and importance for the human race. The incredible aroma of this food has won our hearts because of its healthy side and also the coziness that we feel every time we taste a fresh slice of bread. Over the years is a part of our growth, and it always reminds us of home. The bread was a great part of history and will also be an important part of the future.
