The Humble Gourmand

Over the years, I’ve put in tons of time in the kitchen, cooking as a little girl with my mother and grandmother, up through now with my husband, baking pizza and birthday cakes for friends. You name it, I’ve baked it, or at least had a go at it.

With all the new recipes, gadgets, and cooking techniques out there to explore, what can we say about the history of baking? How did hunters and gatherers become bakers? I stumbled upon the answer and found it so intriguing that I had to share it with you.

Let’s start by talking about the first form of bread. In early civilization, as hunters and gatherers, humans collected and ate the seeds of various types of wild grasses — the early forms of modern grains. However, unlike the grain that we know today, seeds were covered in thick husks. In order to loosen the seeds, humans learned to toast the husks on hot rocks, and then remove the seeds by beating the warmed husks with wooden tools. The resulting meal was then combined with water to make a paste, which could then be laid on a hot rock to cook. This flat, unleavened product was the earliest form of bread.

The ancient Greeks recorded the next advancement in bread-baking by discovering that uncooked bread, left overnight, attracted wild yeast bacteria that fermented and allowed the bread to rise. Furthermore, they combined their flatbreads with meat, fish, cheese, or other toppings to make the prototype of modern pizza.

The ancient Romans developed the first pastries by combining honey and oil with the Greek flatbreads. However, the Romans contributed to bread-baking in a much more substantial way. By conquering the Gauls, they learned the art of making beer, which controls yeast fermentation. From the Gauls, Romans were able to apply the yeast process to bread, thereby yielding leavened bread.

The Middle Ages brought a system and structure to baking. Bakers were separated from the rest of the town, usually outside the city walls, due to the high risk of fire from oven baking. Because of the sensitivity of the ovens, the acts of forming the doughs and cooking the breads were kept separate. One baker would mix the ingredients and shape the loaves, while another would tend the oven and bake the loaves.

Next time, we’ll talk about the discovery of cake and how the French helped transform baking into an art.

All information was obtained from Professional Baking, Fifth Edition, by Wayne Gisslen.

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