Bread Recipes

About 14,400 years ago, someone was baking pita bread in the Black Desert of northeastern Jordan. Researchers made this discovery by sampling the contents of 2 stone fireplaces left at a small campsite by the Natufians, who were hunter gatherers. The charred remains suggest the Natufians gathered wild cereals and tubers to make flour for the bread. Bread was probably not a staple food, but a rare treat. Researchers were surprised to find people making bread at least 4,000 years before the dawn of agriculture.

Meanwhile, at another Natufian site 150 miles away, another team analyzed residues on 3 stone mortors and found evidence of beer being brewed from wild wheat and barley 13,000 years ago.

Beer and Bread! Life was good!

Another source says that to make the first bread, cereal grains were roasted, water added to make a 'grain paste', which was then cooked. This flatbread still has a legacy in many parts of the world. Modern descendants include Mexico's tortillas, Indian chapatti, naan and roti, Armenian lavishes, Iranian sangaks and taboons, Scottish oatcakes and North American johnnycake.

Traces of flour have been found at Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe, which means flour is over 30,000 years old. Cereals were a part of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, even though the majority of their food was animal protein and fats. Around 10,000 years ago, during the Neolithic period, cereals and breads were eaten more regularly. Wheat and barley were domesticated about this time and spread from Southeast Asia to Europe, North Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Rice, maize, and sorghum may have been used to make bread in other parts of the world.

Eventually, leavened bread was created by taking a chunk of day-old dough and adding water and sugar to use as a 'sourdough starter', of sorts. For a lighter bread, the foam from beer was collected and added to the dough. For places that drank wine rather than beer, a mixture of grape must and flour paste worked in a similar manner.

 

https://abreadaffair.com/bakery-vancouver/history-bread-fun-facts-never-knew/#:~:text=Bread%20has%20a%20rich%20history,items%20are%20still%20made%20today

Archaeology, January-February 2019, pp 26-27, "The First Bakers"