About Bread

They say the first evidence of plant-starch production goes back at least 30,000 years. First actual bread baking evidence goes back only 14,500 years. Around 12,000 years ago at the beginning of the agricultural revolution, bread making started to spread across the Middle East, from Mesopotamia to Egypt. The Egyptians have records of yeast production that could be used for both beer and bread. There is a quiet relation between the development of bread and the development of beer, where beer seems to be the driving force behind wheat domestication. People drank beer because in most regions, up until the modern age, beer was safer than water. Beer and bread making continued to develop throughout the Greek and Roman empires, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. The game really changed somewhere in the 18th century with the introduction of compact yeast (1867). We make artisan sourdough bread that takes two–three days to make, and focaccias in about 3 hours. I can talk about bread extensively, but you know what? They say it’s not really healthy. No matter how hard they push that bread is healthy — even the heavy, fermented brown bricks — it’s NOT a Paleo‑diet approved food. Quite the opposite in fact. It’s kind of an enemy of your veins and intestines. Not to mention the spreads. But this is not a Paleo Diet blog. It’s about guilty pleasures, and mainly for me, a connection to our ancestors. With simple tools, a bit of knowledge and some practice, you will wake the neighbourhood up with fabulous boulangerie aromas that will knock out the fiercest Paleo defender for a few hours. A perfect time to indulge. The process is the same across the bread board. We cultivate yeast, we subject them to flour and water, and let NATURE do its course. For that to happen perfectly and repeatedly, we need to provide the same conditions. Same flour, same amount, same hydration levels, same temperature and humidity. Well, either we provide the same conditions or compensate for deficiencies with other parameters (lower temperature, longer fermentation time). I believe that there are no shortcuts in cooking. You know what? Molecular cooking proves me wrong all the time. So I’ll rephrase: When you cook traditional food, there’s no room for shortcuts. A yeast bread will never taste like sourdough bread. It has its own qualities. When I make bread, I connect to so far ago — to a time before we knew that it’s the gases produced by yeast that create the “air pockets” in a well‑developed bread. Before we knew that it's the bacteria’s excrement that makes the dough sour. (Do you still think of bread the same way?) Fresh yeast, dry yeast, poolish, biga, sourdough… Bread is NOT HEALTHY. Sure is tasty though.