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Home , History of bread

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Our Daily : A Brief History

The honey-crusted aroma drifts through the house as four sticky, rounded lumps quickly bake into golden loaves. The timer beeps, an irrelevant reminder as I have been standing in front of the , waiting impatiently. With a mitted hand, I carefully tip one of the loaves from the thin, aluminum pan and tap the bottom, listening for that familiar, hollow sound. Rebelliously, I slice one heel off and slather it with salted butter, too eager to wait for the crust to fully cool.

Steam trickles out from the cut loaf. The butter instantly liquefies and becomes one with the bread. My teeth dig into the crust with a satisfying crackle. The caramel of the crust and creamy, salty butter fill my mouth with delight. Now that I’ve had the first skimming, I can allow the rest to cool properly.

My love affair with bread began in early childhood. Our family of five lived in a tiny town outside of Smithfield in southeastern Virginia. My father commuted from our three acre, under-utilized farm to the shipyards nearly an hour away, leaving behind my mother, my two younger sisters, and me. We had very little money, so my mother made do with what she had.

She stuck to a strict budget, planned simple weekly menus, and baked all of our bread from scratch. A transplant from California, I was probably the only kid in Ivor who brought homemade, whole- to school. There was certainly never a recipe for whole- wheat bread in the locally published Smithfield Cookbook.

My father’s family was originally from Georgia, so my mother learned to incorporate some of his childhood culinary preferences into her cooking. Every year on Thanksgiving, my mother rose before the sun to start on the turkey. After prepping the bird, the next step was always making the cornbread for the using a recipe from my father’s mother, Grandma

K-Z. Marie Callender’s boxed mix may have been sufficient for our weekly chili night, but it Flohr 2 wouldn’t do for Turkey Day. For this feast, the only acceptable cornbread was true southern cornbread baked in a lard-greased, cast iron skillet. The perfect, steaming, golden disk was cooled, crumbled, and mixed in with stale breadcrumbs, celery, onion, turkey broth, eggs, herbs, and spices to create the traditional Flohr family Thanksgiving stuffing.

When I got married at 21, my husband and I went through our own newlywed poverty phase. I remembered what I had learned from my mother growing up and began budgeting and bread. It’s a shame that there is such a strong connection between being destitute and baking. Baking bread is a beautiful and satisfying craft, not something one should only turn to out of desperation. My first loaves were the modern poor-man’s loaves: . I later learned to make scones, cakes and pies from scratch, yeasted cinnamon rolls, , chapatti, and finally a successful rye . Thirteen years later, with two kids, uncountable loaves, and a divorce, I am finally coming to appreciate the fine art of baking a good loaf of bread. It is a rewarding, meditative experience and a skill that more people should acquire.

The Origins of Bread: From Wheat to Eat

Much of the food we consume is steeped in tradition. Considering that humankind has been evolving for a few million years, bread consumption is relatively new in the timeline of human history; its origins only date back to approximately 8,000 BCE in Egypt. The earliest forms of bread were simple pastes of ground grain and water left to bake on rocks in the sun or near a fire. Eventually, wild made its way into the mix, likely by accident, and leavened bread was born. Though it is difficult to pinpoint when yeasted bread became commonplace, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics depict loaves of bread rising near about 5,000 years ago. Flohr 3

The transition from hunter-gatherer tribes to stationary communities was precipitated in part by the of plants. The ease of growing wheat in large quantities gave humankind a plentiful source of simple food: bread. Lance Gibson and Garren Benson from the

Iowa State University’s Department of Agronomy note in their 2002 paper “Origin, History, and

Uses of Oat and Wheat,” that, “Wheat is grown on more land area worldwide than any other crop and is a close third to rice and corn in total world production.” As of 2009, wheat production has surpassed world rice production.

Wheat, like other grains, starts as a grass. It looks rather plain and weedy with its tall, spindly stalks waving across the plains. It is able to grow in harsher conditions than corn or rice and is the primary food crop for human consumption. This grain is highly adaptable and easily storable, making it an ideal food product. With the exception of sufferers of celiac disease and gluten sensitivity, wheat is highly nutritious and easily digestible. It is higher in protein and fiber than corn or rice. Wheat is divided into two main types: hard wheat and soft wheat. Hard wheat is higher in protein and is commonly used for baking bread. Soft wheat has more starch and lower protein content. The greater starch makes it sweeter; it is preferred for making piecrusts and pastries.

When the wheat is fully-grown and its golden head is bowing down, it is ready to harvest.

The stalks are cut down and the seeds separated from the head. Peter Reinhart, a master and theologian, noted the symbolism of harvesting wheat in his TED talk on bread, given in 2008 at the Robert Mondavi Winery in California’s Napa Valley. He said that the wheat has to give up its life in the process of bread making. The wheat and the yeast each go from being alive to being dead. The process of baking the bread gives the ingredients a second life, and the bread, in turn, sustains the life of those who consume it. Reinhart calls bread transformational food. Flohr 4

Although the domestication of wheat began several thousand years ago, the technology for milling wheat may be even older. To make bread, the wheat seeds, called berries, must be crushed and ground into a fine powder. Ancient bread makers would use a saddle quern, like a large mortar and pestle, to slowly grind the wheat berries into a coarse powder. In 2010 evidence of very early grain milling was found in several locations in Europe. Starch was found on the surfaces of Paleolithic grinding tools in Russia, Italy, and the Czech Republic, indicating that some ancestral woman sat before these tools and crushed the grain for the family bread. Stone mill technology progressed very slowly over thousands of years. The ancient Greeks and

Romans built huge rotary querns where slaves or livestock rotated immense circular millstones to grind large quantities of . The Greeks soon followed this with the water mill, which was the primary type of large-scale flour milling until the Industrial Revolution and the invention of steel-roller mills.

Steel mills enabled mass quantity production of white flour. The steel rollers were better able to strip away the tough, fibrous bran and the wheat germ from the sweet, starchy inner kernel called the endosperm. Factory flourmills could cheaply produce white flour on a large scale. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, especially in medieval times, white flour was reserved for the upper classes, as it was extremely labor-intensive to produce. Lower classes tended to make bread from coarse ingredients: whole-meal grains and filler ingredients like peas. The unforeseen consequence of quick white flour production was the removal of much of the nutritional value of the wheat, which is found in the bran and the germ. Flour producers later corrected this by creating “enriched” flour, where the lacking B vitamins were added back in to the nutritionally void white flour. Flohr 5

Once it became widely available, white flour was extremely popular. White bread was soon on every family’s table. Generations have grown up eating the soft, squishy fluff known as

Wonder Bread, which first came out in 1921. White bread was a novelty for me, since my mother never bought it. After moving back to California in fourth grade, I remember trying a piece of white bread. A friend from school lived down the street from me; her mother only bought white bread. I picked the middle out of the slice and balled it up between my fingers. The sticky, sugary texture was like the inside of a donut; it was vastly different from the rich, my mother had baked in Virginia. I haven’t cared for white bread since.

Regional : French to Rye

Though most of the world’s bread is made of wheat, there is some variation according to the grains commonly available in a given region and local methods of preparation. In India, one finds , roti, and chapatti—all wheat-based flat breads, with naan being leavened to create thicker, chewier bread. Chapatti and roti are similar to the Mexican tortilla, also a type of unleavened flat bread, which can be made from wheat or corn flour. The Americas were corn- based before European settlers arrived and so pre-European North American breads were derived from cornmeal. Some from the Middle East are like crackers: lavash and matzo. Naan and lavash are cooked by adhering to the inside of cylindrical clay oven called a tandoor. The baker takes a slab of , shapes it into a ball, presses it out, and slaps it on to the inside of the oven, removing it when browned. Matzo, roti, chapatti, and tortillas are cooked on flat griddles.

Western European varieties, such as France’s famous brioches and baguettes, are mostly made of wheat. Italian wheat breads are the best for making sandwiches. I especially love the chewy ciabatta and herb-flecked focaccia. Rye is popular in northern and eastern European Flohr 6 countries—for baking and for brewing. Thick, hearty sourdough rye is what fed my Danish ancestors, though I prefer a lighter loaf. Some Danish can too closely resemble a brick.

Early English immigrants to America brought with them their custom of making bread from wheat. The Native peoples soon introduced them to breads made of corn. Corn pone, hoecakes, and ashcakes became staples for poorer classes and found a home in America’s southern cooking. The Williamsburg Art of Cookery, a collection of early American recipes from

Colonial Williamsburg, says, “Although Pone (or Hoe Cakes and Ash Cakes as they were also called) became the ‘constant bread’ of the slaves and the poorer people, excellent breads were developed from Indian meal during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which remain in staunch favor today among all classes of Virginians.” The keys to good quality cornbread were, according to the book, choosing the best quality cornmeal and never adding any . My southern grandmother’s recipe stays true to these principles.

Grandma K-Z’s Cornbread

Ingredients Instructions

2 tbsp bacon grease, lard, or butter Preheat oven to 475° F. Heat bacon 1 cup cornmeal grease in cast iron skillet. In a small ¼ cup flour bowl, sift dry ingredients. In a larger ½ tsp baking powder bowl, beat egg and buttermilk. Mix in ¼ tsp baking soda the dry ingredients. Pour in excess ½ tsp bacon grease from skillet. Stir until 1 cup buttermilk combined. Pour batter into skillet. Bake 1 egg for 20 minutes.

Mastering the Art of Bread Baking: Batter Up!

At its most basic form, bread can consist of just flour and water. Ancient pastes of ground grain and water were simplistic precursors to modern day flatbreads like Mexico’s tortillas and Flohr 7

India’s chapatti. Flatbreads such as these are very easy to make. My children and I love baking a round of chapatti for a home-cooked Indian feast. Their little hands mold the small balls of pliable dough into flattened disks, and they delight in contributing to the family meal. Steam from the water in the dough creates air pockets that puff up the palm-sized bread, making it a cousin of pockets. My hungry helpers soon devour the entire batch.

The next step in the evolutionary chain of bread making is to add a . This can come in the form of yeast, a living organism that converts carbohydrates into carbon dioxide and alcohol, thus causing fermentation, or by creating a chemical reaction with baking powder and baking soda. Breads that rely on baking powder or baking soda are called quick breads or batter breads. Yeasted breads require time and attention to properly rise. If the dough is left rising too long, the yeast may be spent and the bread will come out dense and thick rather than light and airy.

Batter breads are very simple and make a satisfying first project for the reluctant baker.

The ingredients are mixed into a batter, much like cake, and poured into a pan to bake; no is required. These breads can be sweet or savory. Cornbread, spoon bread, breads with nuts, herbs, or cheese—these are all excellent savory sides for soups or meals. Sweet fruit breads add a special touch to the family breakfast. My two boys have breakfasted for a week on one loaf of banana bread. I use the same recipe my mother baked for me when I was a child and she was on a hippie health food kick. It comes from The Tassajara Bread Book.

Banana Nut Bread from The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown

Ingredients Instructions

2 cups flour (whole wheat, white, or Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease and half each) flour a loaf pan. Sift dry ingredients. Flohr 8

1 tsp baking soda Add nuts and raisins. In a large bowl, ¼ tsp salt mix oil, honey, lemon zest, eggs, and ½ cup oil or butter (substitute bananas. Add in dry ingredients and stir applesauce for less ) until smooth. Pour into loaf pan. Bake ½ cup honey for 50 to 60 minutes. Cool before Zest of one lemon serving. 2 eggs, beaten 2 cups mashed bananas ½ nuts, chopped (walnuts, pecans) ½ cup raisins

Mastering a loaf of yeasted bread takes a bit more practice. Rather than investing the time in perfecting a simple loaf, some prefer the shortcut of using a . My roommate at

Multnomah Bible College in Portland, Oregon brought back peculiar, cylindrical loaves of cinnamon raisin bread from her parents’ house after weekend visits and holidays. Our freshman fifteen can be attributed to that odd looking bread. I briefly owned a bread machine when I was married. It was a novelty that took up valuable counter space and eventually just collected dust.

Secondhand stores are littered with long forgotten bread machines, so check there first if you want to test one out.

A fresh loaf of bread is so much more rewarding when you’ve had your hands coated to the wrists in gooey, sticky dough. Cooking, for me, has always been approached with a by-the- book mindset. I have never had confidence in my ability to adlib food preparation, so I rely heavily on recipes. With my early bread baking ventures, I sniffed out what looked like a decent recipe and followed it to the letter. During the arduous kneading stage, my hands would tire, at which point I would give up and move on to the next step. The results were edible, though unremarkable, beginner loaves.

When I became a full time mother, I took a greater interest in nutrition and providing healthy food for my family’s consumption. This required more attention to detail and a Flohr 9 willingness to slow down and take my time. Having read in one of my cookbooks that the fermentation process of sourdough made the nutritional qualities more readily available to the body, I decided to try my hand at making a rye sourdough. After a week of daily feeding the frothy, beer-scented starter, I set out to bake the loaves. The recipe was for four loaves, calling for 13 cups of flour. It said that an electric stand mixer could be used, so in went the impossible dough to the KitchenAid bowl. The mixer wobbled and shook and the motor strained. Four loaves were shaped and set out to rise. Eighteen hours later, the pans were skeptically placed into the warm oven. The resulting loaves had to be carefully sawed through, so as not to slice off a finger.

Thoroughly disappointed by the waste of a week and a tremendous amount of flour, I scoured the Internet for suggestions. One book kept coming up as the supreme reference: The

Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book. It was one my mother had learned from when she was a young wife. A trip to the local thrift store luckily produced a copy and off I went to hone my bread making skills. The first section was titled A Loaf For Learning. I carefully read through it, absorbing every detail. Kneading and moisture were the two keys that I was missing. (One rule that I continue to struggle with is allowing the bread to cool completely before cutting. Master insist that the bread must be cooled because it continues to cook slightly after being removed from the over. The cooling period allows the crust to fully form and the flavors to finish developing.)

For my next baking experiment, I took this newfound insight and applied it to the

Molasses Bread recipe from The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book. Instead of adding all of the flour and water in one big bowl, as I had done before, I slowly added flour to the liquid until the dough had just the right consistency: moist and sticky rather than smooth as clay, but not so sticky that Flohr 10 it was muddy. Then I took my time kneading the dough to the proper elasticity, rather than only paying mind to the clock. I turned, folded, and pressed the dough, alternating between aggression and more meditative strokes. After kneading and rising, the dough was turned gently out of the bowl for rounding. With this step, you press the bubbles of gas out of the dough, flatten it, fold it over into a round, and tuck the seams underneath the newly formed ball. The Laurel’s Kitchen

Bread Book says, “Deflating and rounding invigorates the yeast, but it also tenses the gluten.”

The dough must rest briefly before being shaped into a loaf.

After ten minutes of resting, the dough was ready to shape. This all should be done very gently in order to maintain the established gluten structure of the dough. I flattened the dough ball carefully and folded the top portion over. The sides were then tucked over so that it somewhat resembled a cloth diaper. Then I smoothed and stretched the dough into an elongated cylinder and pressed it into the pan. It was ready for the final rise before baking.

The final rise, or proof, is shorter than the initial rise. After 45 minutes, I placed the puffy loaf in the middle of the oven and crossed my fingers. Thirty minutes later, my efforts were rewarded. This loaf was absolute perfection! The bread didn’t tear or crumble. It was soft and light (well, at light as 100% whole wheat can get). And it had the most heavenly hint of caramel from the molasses in the dough. It has been my go-to recipe ever since. I use the 24-hour rise method to bring out the flavor and enhance the nutritional properties.

Molasses Bread from The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book by Laurel Robertson

Ingredients

¼ tsp active dry yeast ½ cup warm water ¼ cup molasses 2 ½ cups cold water Flohr 11

6 cups stone-ground whole-wheat flour 1 tbsp sea salt 2 tbsp butter

Add the yeast to the warm water. Stir the molasses into the cold water. Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl. Pour in the yeast and warm water. Slowly add the molasses and cold water. Mix and then turn the dough onto a clean surface for kneading. Knead the dough for at least 20 minutes. Add the butter in at the end.

Let rise for up to 20 hours, deflating gently every eight hours. On the final deflation, divide the dough into two sections. Round the dough, let it rest for ten minutes, and then shape into loaves. Place in greased loaf pans and let rise in a warm place for one hour. Bake 350° F for one hour. Cool completely before serving.

Bread as Symbol: The Staff of Life

Bread has played a significant and universal role in the recorded history of humankind. It has taken on a deeper symbolism beyond its ability to provide physical nourishment. Bread has been incorporated into our speech as a euphemism for money and in reference to friendship. The income earning party in a marriage is referred to as the breadwinner. Dough is slang for cash.

Breaking bread with someone means sharing a meal—an act of peace and communion. The word companion originated with the Latin words com- and panis, meaning with and bread, respectively.

The importance of bread to humankind is shown through religious symbolism as well.

The Bible makes repeated references to wheat and bread. Exodus talks about the origins of

Passover, when Moses led the Jews out of slavery in Egypt. They had to flee so hastily that they could not bake leavened bread. The Passover feast has been celebrated for thousands of years using matzo, unleavened bread. When the Jews were wandering in the desert for 40 years, God fed them with manna, bread falling from heaven.

In the prayer Christ gave to his disciples, famously known as The Our Father, he tells us to ask our heavenly Father for daily bread. “Give us this day our daily bread,” it says in the Flohr 12

Gospel of Matthew. The New Testament calls Jesus the Bread of Life. Thinking back to bread being transformational food, as mentioned by Peter Reinhart, Christians take this symbolism very seriously. Every day millions of Catholics and Orthodox believers participate in the ancient ritual of the Mass. At the pinnacle of the Mass, during the Prayer of Consecration, the faithful believe God works through the priest to perform a miracle; the bread, it is taught, becomes the body of Christ. No longer does the bread remain; the mystical presence of Christ has transformed the bread into his flesh. “He who does not drink my blood and eat my flesh has no life in him.”

This act of communion, breaking bread with fellow believers, transforms the communicant and sustains his spiritual life.

Eleven years ago, I became a Catholic. My then-husband and I converted together. We were privately received into the Roman Catholic Church on Friday, February 23, 2001. The following Sunday, I received my first Holy Communion. I nervously followed the endless line of communicants to the rail before the altar and knelt down. My hands were clasped together to signal that I would receive the host on the tongue and not in the hand. The thin, flavorless wafer was gently placed on the tip of my tongue and I drew it in, letting it melt in my mouth. Finally, a bit of Christ resided within me. A passage from Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima came to mind: the children in the story are warned not to chew on the wafer. I am careful not to chew, either, though I know this is only superstition and literary silliness. I have since lapsed a bit in the practice of my faith, but I continue to long for that sliver of bread and communion with

Christ. One day, I will find my way fully back to the one who is the Bread of Life.

Some disagreement lies between Catholics and Orthodox over whether the bread should be leavened or unleavened. Catholics use unleavened bread for communion in remembrance and reenactment of the Last Supper, in which Jesus (who was Jewish) celebrated Passover using Flohr 13 unleavened bread. The Orthodox, and some eastern-rite Catholics, prefer leavened bread to symbolize the resurrection—Christ rising from the dead after his crucifixion. They dip the bread into the communion wine and serve them both at once to the communicant; flesh and blood are united.

Rolling Along: Becoming a Joyful Baker

For many people, myself included, bread plays a daily role in life. Morning , sandwiches, dinner rolls, bagels at the local coffee shop, and Starbucks muffins are staples in our lives that sustain us to one degree or another. Around the world, human beings partake in their daily bread in different forms.

Until recently, my preferred daily bread was store-bought sourdough during my times of plenty. The connection between financial desperation and baking was one I had overlooked until beginning this piece. This idea was somewhere in the recesses of my mind, but writing about my own history with baking bread brought it to the forefront. I had not thought of baking much as a joy in itself, but rather a chore to complete out of necessity. Limited time and finances have held me back from baking as a hobby. (My endless battle with my waistline prevents further indulgence as well.) Seeing the tradition-rich history of bread, its symbolism, and its role in my own life gives me a greater desire to incorporate baking for pleasure into my days. At the very least, I can become more mindful of the joy in the moment of kneading the dough, and find significance in the act of creating life-sustaining, transformational food.

I’ve grown in my knowledge and appreciation of bread making in the years since I was a little country girl. From the whole-wheat loaves my mother baked, to the bacon-grease-infused cornbread of my Georgian grandparents, to the molasses brown loaves I bake for my children Flohr 14 today—my love of bread has been enriched with time and experience. My mother has passed on her bread baking books to me. The pages of her favorite recipes are worn; remnants of dough and batter brown and stiffen them. I have made good use of these resources, turning to them again and again. There have been many experiments, some failures, and some successes, but all full of learning. The bakers that have gone before me, both amateur and professional, have guided me along the way. In turn, I hope that I will guide my children in fostering a connectedness to life and food through our continued bread making adventures. Flohr 15

Sources

Beranbaum, Rose Levy. The Bread Bible. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2003.

Print.

Brown, Edward Espe. The Tassajara Bread Book. Boulder: Shambhala, 1970. Print.

Bullock, Helen. The Williamsburg Art of Cookery. Richmond: The Dietz Press, 1985. Print.

Gibson, Lance and Garren Benson. “Origin, History, and Uses of Oat (Avena sativa) and Wheat

(Triticum aestivum).” Iowa State University, Department of Agronomy. Jan 2002. Web. 1

May 2012.

Hertzberg, Jeff and Zoe Francois. Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. New York: Thomas

Dunne Books, 2007. Print.

Hurt, Caroline Darden and Joan Hundley Powell. The Smithfield Cookbook. Hampton: Multi-

Print, 1978. Print.

Mayle, Peter and Gerard Auzet. Confessions of a French Baker. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

2005. Print.

Reinhart, Peter. “Peter Reinhart On Bread.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading. Jul 2008. Web. 4 May

2012.

Revendin, Anna, et al. “Thirty thousand-year-old evidence of plant food processing.”

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 18 Oct

2010. Web. 4 May 2012.

Robertson, Laurel, Carol Flinders and Bronwen Godfrey. The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book: A

Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking. New York: Random House, 1984. Print.

Tyree, Marion Cabell. Housekeeping in Old Virginia. Louisville: Favorite Recipes Press, Inc.,

1965. Print.