TREATISE ON BREAD.HISTORY OF BREAD.
Primitive food of man. Bruising and grinding grain. Baking. Invention of leavened bread. Bread among the Greeks and Romans—among the Hebrews. Simplicity of the bread now used in many countries.
In the English version of the sacred scriptures, the term Bread is frequently used to signify vegetable food in general. Thus in Gen. iii, 19, the Lord says to Adam—“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread (or food) till thou return to the ground.” See also Gen. xviii, 5, and xxviii, 20, and Ex. ii, 20.
The most extended sense of the word, however, according to general usage, comprehends all farinaceous vegetable substances which enter into the diet of man;such as the farinaceous seeds or grain, nuts, fruit, roots, &c. And in this extended sense, Bread, in some form or other, has been the principal article in the diet of mankind, from the earliest generations of the human race, to the present time; except among the few, small and scattered tribes, which have, perhaps, ever since the days of Noah, in different parts of the earth, subsisted mainly on animal food.
It is nearly certain that the primitive inhabitants of the earth, ate their food with very little, if any artificial preparation.
The various fruits, nuts, seeds, roots, and other vegetable substances on which they fed, were eaten by them in their natural state, with no other grinding than that which was done by the teeth.
As the human family increased, and population became more dense and extended, and providential measures more necessary, the condition and circumstances of society gradually led to the invention and adoption of the simple, and, at first,rude arts of domestic life. Among these, was that of bruising the harder articles of their food, such as nuts and seeds, or grain, on flat stones, selected and kept for the purpose. By constant use, these stones in time became hollowed out; and being thereby rendered more convenient, men at length began to form mortars and pestles from stones; and probably the next step was the construction of the rude kind of hand-mills, which continued in use for many centuries; and indeed, which, with the stone mortars, have, throughout all ages and in almost every portion of the earth, been used in the ruder states of society.
When men became acquainted with the use of fire, they probably often parched their corn or grain before they pounded it; and afterwards, they learned to mix it with water into the consistency of dough, and to bake this, in an unleavened or unfermented state, on flat stones before the fire, or in the hot ashes or hot earth, or in the rude ovens which they formed, by digging holes in the earth, into whichthey put heated stones, and slightly covered them with leaves or grass, and then laid in the article they wished to bake, and over this strewed some leaves, and then covered the whole with earth.[A]
This kind of unleavened bread, undoubtedly constituted a very important, if not the principal article of artificially prepared food in the diet of the primitive inhabitants of the earth, for many centuries; and the same, or very nearly the same kind of bread continued in general use down to the days of Abraham; and it is probable that the unleavened bread used by his descendants at the feast of the Passover, before and after they left Egypt, was of the same kind.
It is hardly possible, however, that it could have been otherwise, than that, at a much earlier period, larger quantities of this dough were occasionally made, than were immediately baked, and consequentlyportions of it were suffered to stand and ferment; and by this means, men were in process of time learned to make leavened, or raised bread.
At how early a date, loaf or raised bread came into common use, it is impossible now to ascertain with any considerable degree of precision. The scriptures do not afford us any evidence that Abraham was accustomed to such bread; but the fact that Moses, at the institution of the supper of the Passover, the night before the Jews left Egypt, commanded them strictly to abstain from leavened bread, and to eat only the unleavened, proves conclusively, that the Israelites at least, were then accustomed to fermented, or raised bread.
Neither history nor tradition enables us to speak with any degree of confidence in regard to the period at which other nations became acquainted with the art of bread-making; but from all that has come down to us from ancient times, we learn that the primitive generations of every nation, subsisted on fruits and other products ofthe vegetable kingdom, in their uncooked or natural state.
“The Greeks assert that they were taught the art of making bread by their god, Pan; and Pliny informs us that this art was not known at Rome till near six hundred years after the foundation of that city. The Roman armies, he says, on their return from Macedonia, brought Grecian bakers into Italy. Before this time, the Romans prepared their meal in a kind of pap or soft pudding; and on this account Pliny calls them pap eaters.”
But though the Egyptians and Israelites were probably among the earliest portions of the human family, who became acquainted with the art of making loaf or raised bread, the quality of their bread continued to be exceedingly simple and coarse for many generations.
Even after the establishment of the Hebrew nation in Palestine—in the most splendid days of Jerusalem—at the period of the highest refinement of the Jews, in the arts of civil and domestic life, their fine flour, from which their choicest breadand cakes were made, was, in comparison with modern superfine flour, extremely coarse,—ground mostly by females, in hand-mills constructed and kept for that purpose.
From Rome the art of bread-making very slowly found its way over considerable portions of Europe. A thousand years after Julius Cæsar first entered Britain, the rude people of that country were little acquainted with raised bread. “Even at present,” says Prof. Thomson, “loaf bread is seldom used except by the higher classes of inhabitants, in the northern countries of Europe and Asia.”
In Eastern and Southern Asia, rice constitutes the principal bread-stuff; and this is generally prepared with great simplicity. In Middle and Western Asia, and in Africa, bread, though made of different kinds of grain, is prepared with almost equal simplicity. In Scotland, Ireland, and indeed throughout Europe generally, barley, oats, rye, potatoes, peas, beans, chesnuts, and other farinaceous vegetables, constitute the bread-stuff of most of the laboring people,or peasantry. In the islands of the Pacific and Southern oceans, the bread of the inhabitants consists of the plantain, bananas, yams, bread-fruit, and other like vegetables, simply roasted, baked, or boiled.
Bread, therefore, of some kind or other, made of some of the farinaceous products of the vegetable kingdom, has probably, in almost every portion of the world, and every period of time, been one of the first, and most important, and universal articles of food, artificially prepared by cooking, which has entered into the diet of mankind; and hence it has with great propriety been called “the staff of life.”