baking bread

The Mill, the Bake House and the Bakery

As discussed before, leavened bread, unlike porridge and flat cakes, was usually prepared outside of the family home.

The process of making bread required equipment and specialized skills beyond the reach of the average household.

Interestingly, bread was not, as a rule, prepared in bakeries.

Until well into the Middle Ages, bakeries (establishments that sold and distributed bread) were generally kept separate from bake houses (facilities that baked bread).

The principal reasons for this tradition were highly practical in nature: fire prevention, logistics and cost management.
Like most structures, private homes and bakeries were made of highly flammable materials.

Large bread-baking ovens were serious fire hazards.
To protect life and property, bake houses were located away from inhabited areas.

They were often constructed near rivers.
This practice had two main benefits. Water was ready at hand for putting out fires, preparing doughs and cleaning purposes. In addition, bake houses were frequently located next to water-powered mills where flour was produced.

This reduced the time and expense of transporting flour.
Ovens and related baking equipment were also expensive.

Bake houses were often owned by wealthy feudal lords or businessmen.
They allowed the bakery owners of the region to use their facilities in a communal fashion on a fee-basis or in exchange for provision of bread.

This widespread practice made the cost of producing bread much lower for the individual bakery owners

The Staple of the Table

Leavened bread became the staple food, particularly of the masses, though flat cakes and porridges in particular were still widely consumed.

Workers took hunks of bread into the field to sustain themselves throughout the day.

At the table, thick slices of bread known as trenchers were served with a variety of dishes, often forming the centerpiece or base of a meal.

Long before John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, made his famous innovation of adding a second slice on top in the 1700s, bread was commonly served as a base for meats and sauces.

Certain soups and stews were poured on top of bread placed inside a bowl or dish.

Rome and Beyond

Greek settlements in Gaul predated Roman control of the area.

The Greeks brought the tradition of beer making to Gaul, as well as their baking techniques.

Bakers in Gaul began using beer yeast to improve the rising action of certain breads.

Greek bakers dominated the bread trade in Rome.

They established a strict guild system for their craft in Rome, extending a tradition that dated back to 800 BC in Greece.

Through the expansion of the Roman Empire, Greek baking traditions influenced a vast area of the world, especially Western Europe.

In time, France would assume the leadership position in the craft of making bread (as well as wine) formerly held by Greece.

Greek Innovations

Culinary historians credit the Greeks for developing bread baking into an art.

Proper front-loaded bread ovens originated in Ancient Greece.

The Greeks created a wide variety of doughs, loaf shapes and styles of serving bread with other foods.
Baking developed as a trade and profession as bread increasingly was prepared outside of the family home by specially trained workers to be sold to the public.

The Greeks also pioneered sweetbreads, fritters, puddings, cheesecakes, pastries, and even wedding cakes.

Often prepared in symbolic shapes, these products were originally served during special occasions and ceremonies.

By 300 AD, the Greeks had developed over seventy different kinds of bread.

The first true breads

The first true breads were probably developed in the Mediterranean area and Middle East around 2500 BC when fermented doughs (sourdoughs) were added to flour to make flat cakes rise when baked.

Like many innovations, sourdough leavening probably came about by accident.

An early improvement on baking bread on top of coals or griddles was the addition of a clay bell-shaped dome that enveloped the baking dough.

This insulation technique improved the rising action and cooked the dough more evenly.
Baking molds and ovens further refined this process.

The Ancient Egyptians baked breads in stacked molds placed in an oven.

The Assyrians used a different approach all together:

They placed doughs in heated earthen pots that were sealed and buried in the ground.

The First Foods Made from Grains

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Wheat and barely have been discovered at Jericho (in modern Jordan), the oldest known site of human civilization, which dates back to 10,000 BC.

However, millennia would pass before bread was developed as we know it today.

Whole or cracked grains were first eaten raw or after being dried, like modern seeds and nuts.

The direct predecessors of bread were porridges (grains mixed and cooked with water) and flat cakes (doughs baked directly on coals, or on heated stones and tiles).

Various forms of porridge or mush are still eaten daily by a large percentage of the earth's population.

Ancestors of early flat cakes are still common today in the form of crepes, pita, rice cakes, papadum, fritters, nan, pancakes, tamales, and, of course, pizza.

The Twin Births of Cultivation and Civilization

The development of grain cultivation is closely linked to the cultural history of humankind.

Indeed the original meaning of the word culture is cultivation.
As we all recall from our history classes, humans lived as wandering hunter-gatherers for eons.

The first civilizations arose as humans developed agriculture and animal husbandry.

These monumental innovations enabled humans to live in permanent settlements because they provided adequate food production to sustain life in a fixed location.

Since the dawn of civilization grain products have formed the base of the human diet.