Bread Recipes
About14,400 years ago, someone was baking pita bread in the Black Desert ofnortheastern Jordan. Researchers made this discovery by sampling the contentsof 2 stone fireplaces left at a small campsite by the Natufians, who werehunter gatherers. The charred remains suggest the Natufians gathered wildcereals and tubers to make flour for the bread. Bread was probably not a staplefood, but a rare treat. Researchers were surprised to find people making breadat least 4,000 years before the dawn of agriculture.
Meanwhile,at another Natufian site 150 miles away, another team analyzed residues on 3stone mortors and found evidence of beer being brewed from wild wheat andbarley 13,000 years ago.
Beer andBread! Life was good!
Anothersource says that to make the first bread, cereal grains were roasted, wateradded to make a 'grain paste', which was then cooked. This flatbread still hasa legacy in many parts of the world. Modern descendants include Mexico'stortillas, Indian chapatti, naan and roti, Armenian lavishes, Iranian sangaksand taboons, Scottish oatcakes and North American johnnycake.
Traces offlour have been found at Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe, which means flouris 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. Around10,000 years ago, during the Neolithic period, cereals and breads were eatenmore regularly. Wheat and barley were domesticated about this time and spreadfrom 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 theworld.
Eventually,leavened bread was created by taking a chunk of day-old dough and adding waterand sugar to use as a 'sourdough starter', of sorts. For a lighter bread, thefoam from beer was collected and added to the dough. For places that drank winerather than beer, a mixture of grape must and flour paste worked in a similarmanner.
https://abreadaffair.com/bakery-vanco...
Archaeology, January-February 2019, pp 26-27, "TheFirst Bakers"
