Bread Making

Bread — made from ground grain (flour) mixed with water and baked — is the most universal human food, consumed in some form by virtually every culture on Earth. The oldest known bread is a 14,400-year-old flatbread found in Jordan, predating agriculture. Leavened bread (using yeast or sourdough cultures to make the dough rise) appears in ancient Egypt around 3,000 BCE. Bread's chemistry is remarkable: yeast consumes sugars and produces CO₂ (making bread rise) and flavor compounds; the Maillard reaction (browning when baked) creates hundreds of flavor molecules; gluten (from wheat proteins) provides the elastic structure. The 20th century's bread industrialization (sliced bread, 1928 — 'the greatest thing since sliced bread'; Wonder Bread, mass-produced white bread) traded nutrition for convenience. The artisan bread revival (sourdough, whole grain, heritage wheat) is a direct reaction.