Bread is inextricably linked to the history of Europe and the Near East. This certainly applies to the leavened bread, for which mainly varieties of wheat and rye can be used, other grains are at most additives. However, unproofed flatbreads or cereal cakes are in use all over the world, even today.
The chapatti in India, made from wheat or millet, and sometimes some legume flour; the Mexican corn tortilla; in Africa, in addition to grain porridge, people also eat unleavened ‘bread’ made of maize, millet or sorghum, and even cassava, the flour of the cassava root
But also in the Western world unleavened breads still exist, such as the Jewish matzo and the Scandinavian crispbread, made of wheat, resp. baked rye and Frisian rye bread.
Bread and grain culture
The first archaeological reports of unleavened bread date back to prehistoric times. More than 6,000 years ago there were farming settlements in the Near East and Southeast Asia; the corn culture in Central and South America is also very old. Even closer to home, on the Swiss lakes, prehistoric finds have been made that point to the baking of bread.
Information on the origin of grain culture has also been obtained through other means. Russian biologist Vavilov went on a search for wild varieties of grains (and other food plants) that had genetic affinities with the current grain varieties. He visited areas where as many characteristics as possible of the current grains, but spread over different wild varieties, still occur today. In this way he came to three ‘hearths’ of grain culture.
- Southeast Asia with rice (India, Indonesia), millet and 6-row barley (Z. China).
- Near East: wheat and rye (Persia, Afghanistan and others), bucket (Mediterranean), 2-row barley (Abyssynia).
- South America: maize (including Peru).
Those origins were in the mountains, where the climatic conditions for wild grain grasses were favorable. Settlements or villages arose together with the grain culture.
The link between civilization and agriculture can also be found in the word culture, which means both ‘human civilization’ and ‘agriculture’. Yet it may have gone differently. It is plausible that in the Near East. and perhaps also elsewhere, villages already existed before agriculture or livestock farming was known. It was not cereal cultures but rich fields of wild grain that led to the creation of villages. Even now one can find such fields.
Archaeologist Harlan was able to collect a kilogram of clean grain in one hour in Turkey. This wild grain was twice as rich in protein as the currently cultivated varieties. Harlan concluded that a family could have harvested enough grain in three weeks to live a full year.
Bread grains, especially wheat
Although barley cannot provide leavened bread without wheat, we still want to mention it, because the barley culture is older than the wheat. The two-row barley comes from a wild variety that grows from Syria to Afghanistan: Hordeum spontaneum. Another primeval barley, the six-row barley, originates from ZOAsia. Cultivated two-row barley is already known from about 4000 years BC.
Wheat is the bread grain par excellence. It has been in cultivation for over 3000 years; in the late stone age it was already in culture in Central Europe. The current varieties were created by crossing primal varieties, but also by selecting varieties with a larger number of chromosomes in the cell nucleus, the polyploid varieties. The oldest form of culture is the Einkorn (Triticum monococcum), which was used in the Stone Age and is now rare. Then follows the bucket (T. dicoccum), which – via crossing and poliploidy – has resulted in the durum wheat (T. durum), which is too hard for bread, but is used to prepare macaroni and other ‘pasta’. The bucket itself was used in the bronze age. Nowadays it is still grown as animal feed in a few places in South Europe.
A little later came the spelled (T. spelta); it is still and increasingly grown in Europe.
After all, the current bread-wheat has been cultivated from bucket and spelled; the Triticum aestivum, also called Triticum vulgare, with its many varieties. Now the reader may already be dizzy. And then it should be remembered that the varieties of Triticum aestivum differ greatly both externally (with or without chaff needles) and inwardly: the hard varieties (not to be confused with the ‘durum’) and the soft ones. . Finally, there is a distinction, depending on the sowing time, between summer and winter wheat. The latter overwinters as a young plant. In Northern countries such as the Netherlands and England it is best to use the soft varieties, at least when maximum yield is the main goal. This grain is mostly used as animal feed. You can certainly bake bread with it, but the soft wheat dough does not want to rise so well. It does not meet the requirements that are now often placed on bread; The harder bread wheat is imported by the large mills from America, Canada and France.