About Bread

There is evidence that bread was made in Egypt more than twelve thousand years ago, about 10,000BC. Those breads from so long ago would have differed little to proper handmade sourdough bread today.  The discovery of fermentation probably came about by accident through a paste made from coarse flour and water to make unleavened bread being left unattended and natural fermentation starting.  The baking of this dough would have provided a pleasant sponginess in contrast to the hardness of unleavened bread.

 

Bread making spread quickly through the Mediterranean Basin as did other forms of fermented products.  Beer making has been dated to around 5000BC as has wine making and cheese making.  All these products relied on wild yeasts starting fermentation in which naturally occurring sugars in grains, fruit and milk are converted into alcohol and produce carbon dioxide.

 

It is this carbon dioxide that causes the bread to rise and leaves the residual air pockets or holes in the baked breads.

 

As tribes throughout Africa, Asia and Europe began cultivating grains, bread making followed.  Grains used were wheat, spelt, barley, sorghum and maize.  For thousands of years bread made from wheat was reserved for the upper classes with the peasants being fed barley bread.

 

By 500BC bread was available from bakeries in Athens and Greek bakers became established in Rome during 200BC.  

 

Refinements in milling made bread more accessible in the Middle Ages as did the construction of more sophisticated ovens.  But it was still not until the mid to late 1800’s bread making took a big leap forward due to the scientific work of French scientist Louis Pasteur who unravelled the chemical processes behind fermentation.  This led to the development of laboratory produced yeasts which were much more stable and predictable than wild yeasts.

 

In 1921 a bread-slicing machine was developed which proved to be a signal for large-scale bread production to begin.  This accelerated with the end of rationing after World War 2.  Unfortunately this lead to these Western civilisation bread producers to start including additives to prolong shelf life and speed up production at the expense of flavour producing long fermentation.

 

Today’s modern sliced breads normally contain four or five natural ingredients and eight or nine chemicals.  I find them completely devoid of flavour or texture.  Sadly they outsell artisan -produced breads many times over.  One of the additives used is calcium propionate (282) that has been linked to hyperactivity and inattention in children.  Australian health authorities have not banned this additive but I would be very wary of any bread product containing this product.  It is often found in wraps.

 

Fortunately for us in Australian and me personally a revival in artisan sourdough bread-making started in Melbourne in the 1980’s led by John Downes whose book, The Natural Tucker Bread Book inspired me to start making sourdough bread.  Migration too played a major role in lifting the standard of bread in Australia especially with post World War 2 migration from Europe which brought with it Italian, German, Polish, Macedonian and Turkish bakers with the bread styles of their home countries.

 

Today in Australia there is probably not a style or type of bread not available to city based consumers.  From rustic San Francisco style sourdoughs to heavy German ryes, light Vietnamese rolls, almost like French baguettes, Turkish pide, Indian naan and Lebanese flatbreads.  All made from refined wheat flour to ancient spelt, rustic rye flour, barley and as many blends as you can dream up.

 

Today’s café culture owes as much to artisan bread makers as it does artisan coffee roasters as we eagerly order sourdough toast, plain or fruit for breakfast and an amazing array of sandwiches, rolls and wraps.

 

However there are still those of us who get great joy from the therapeutic challenge of making our own bread by hand, in the style we want and its is to those wonderful people this website is dedicated.