Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Who invented bread?
Was it an accidental discovery?
If so, how did someone accidentally mix all these random ingredients and then unintentionally expose them to 300+ degree temperatures for approximately 25 minutes?
If not, how did someone come up with the idea to mix flour, eggs, yeast, etc. and just see what happens if they put it in the oven for a while?
When and where did this take place?
According to the infallible wisdom of the Internet, "bread is prehistoric - every ancient culture known used some form of bread, and stone-age tools often include implements for grinding grains into flour" (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_was_bread_invented_and_who_created_it). Hmm, okay, so now the scenario in my mind has shifted from a 17th-Century French dude in a tall white hat throwing random ingredients all over the place like a mad scientist... to a caveman accidentally baking a loaf of perfectly baked golden-brown bread in his stone cave-oven...? Actually, several cavemen and several cave-ovens in several different parts of the world. I'm guessing the first guy didn't just tweet his new discovery to share it with the rest of the world, so how did various people in prehistoric societies across the world all accidentally discover bread?
Google Answers offers a more comprehensive explanation here, but the basic consensus seems to be that humans have been harvesting wheat since before recorded history, discovered they could grind it and make it into a paste, and then heated this paste over a fire to make a flat bread. Then somewhere along the way, yeast was accidentally added and they discovered bread that rises!
Prehistoric humans and their ingenuity.
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