Bread has been around for a very long time… at least 30,000 years. The first bread produced was likely cooked versions of a grain-paste, made from roasted, ground cereal grains and water, and would have been a flatbread, a bread with no yeast in it to make it ‘rise’.
Bread has been vital to the development of our world as we know it. Because of it, wheat was domesticated, cultivation spread and enabled humans to become farmers rather than remaining hunters and foragers. By becoming farmers, this allowed us to form towns, which in turn allowed us to become more sophisticated in our societal organization.
Today, there are so very many varieties and forms of bread. We still have flatbreads – from tacos to pitas and naans to chapatis. We also have bagels, sourdough, croutons, loaves of all sorts from rye to whole wheat to multigrain, and of course pizza, pretzels and donuts. It all depends on what you add to the basic flour and water starter… do you add yeast? a sweetener? spices? fruit? or perhaps you change the type of flour from wheat to rye or corn flour.
On Nov. 17, people from around the world celebrate Home-Made Bread Day… an excellent reason to try that new recipe you found, or to dust off the one your parents (or grandparents) used to make. If you don’t feel up to baking bread yourself, why not stop by the No-Host Bazaar on Nov. 16 (at the Fall Fair Hall)… there are many vendors there, quite a few of whom will have baking available, and some of them may just have some fresh home-made loaves of bread waiting for you to try.
