Wheat has been found in pits where human settlements flourished 8,000 years ago. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew bread for a staple food even in those days people argued whether white or brown bread was best.
Further back, in the Stone Age, people made solid cakes from stone-crushed barley and wheat. A millstone used for grinding corn has been found, that is thought to be 7,500 years old.
Another name for those earliest breads is unleavened bread. Unleavened bread is flat, dense bread. Before the discovery of yeast all breads were unleavened. This was a type for bread which dates back to Neolithic times, which began in approximately 8000 to 10000 BC.
The Sumerians passed on their style of preparing bread to Egyptian in approximately 3000 BC.
Ancient Egypt is where bread really began to take shape as the yeasty food people enjoy today.
The Greek gods received offerings of a ritual uncooked bread made of fine flour mingled with oil and wine. This sacrificial offering, known as psadista, united the three basic foodstuffs of bread, oil and wine.
The bakers in Rome at period 168 BC enjoyed special privileges: they were the only craftsmen who were freemen of the city, all other trades being conducted by slaves.
The Egyptian grammarian and philosopher Athenaeus, who lived in the third century AD, has handed down to us considerable knowledge about bread and baking in those days.
He wrote that the best bakers were from Phoenicia or Lydia, and the best bread-makers from Cappadocia. He gives us a list of the sorts of bread common in his time-leavened and unleavened loaves; loaves made from the best wheat flour; loaves made from groats, or rye, and some from acorns and millet. Athenaeus listed at least 72 different kinds of bread with an established tradition behind them.
There were lovely crusty loaves too, and loaves baked on a hearth. Bakers made bread mixed with cheese, but the favorite of the rich was always white bread made from wheat. In ancient Greece, keen rivalry existed between cities as to which produced the best bread.
Ancient of history of bread
