"The Smell of Good Bread Baking..."
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“... like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight...”
In America’s Sweethearts, Julia Roberts tells John Cusack that she’s thinking of something that she shouldn’t be thinking about and that she even dreams about it: bread. Her carb-conscious diet had her longing for this glorious mixture of flour, water, salt and/or yeast.
And really, that is how simple this pleasure is still: two or three of the most fundamental ingredients baked into luscious loaves. Or sticks. Or rolls. (Who doesn’t smell hot, fresh bread right now?)
This month we’ll look at some different types of bread and their histories and recipes. First, a bit of background and trivia about one of our most ancient foods.
- The word “bread” may come from the Latin crustum meaning “broken bits, pieces,” thus “break” to “bread.” But prior to the year 1100, “loaf” was the more recognized word in many cultures.
- Flatbreads came first, around 20,000 years ago. When grains became cultivated and more refined in the diet during the Neolithic age, unleavened dough gathered airborne yeasts and changed the texture and process.
- Early cultures began isolating yeast from beer and wine to make bread.
- Wheat is native to the area around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, today’s Iraq.
- One acre of wheat can produce enough bread to feed a family of four for 10 years, or 9000 people for one day.
- The first wheat in the United States was planted in 1777, and today it’s grown in 42 states. Half of the wheat produced is used here.
- Ancient Egyptians started the practice of using moldy bread as a topical cure for cuts.
- In the 16th century bread consumption was related to class. Workers/servants got the bottoms of the loaves (often burned,) families ate the middle portion, and the wealthy took the upper crusts.
- While Julia Roberts’ character was more afraid of gaining weight than of the bread itself, there is a real background to a movement in the 1920s and its “fear of starch,” amylophobia, which was thought to originate from a controversial food and health activist in the mid-1800s, Sylvester Graham.
(More information on bread at Wikipedia and the Wheat Foods Council)
