Tuscan bread - Photo © fugzu |
The bread
Bread is like health - when it's there we don't notice it,
when it's not there it becomes a hardship.
There has never
been a population from the most civilized to the most
primitive which has not had its own bread, leavened or
unleavened, of wheat, rye or other cereals, as bread rolls,
loaves or simply focaccia.
The primary material
Over the centuries the origins and the date of the first
wheat have been a source of discussion for numerous
historians, geographers amd those interested in agriculture.
However, nothing definite has come out of all of this. |
Strabone, an historian and geographer born in 60
B.C., placed its origins in India. Diodoro Siculo, a Greek
historian of the 1st century B.C. and born in Agirio in
Sicily, claimed this area as the legitimate birthplace of
the cereal.
Beroso, supreme priest of Babylon in the 3rd
century B.C. and author of a History of Babylon, maintains
that wheat, along with barley and sesame, grew naturally
along the Euphrates River.
Many centuries later, in 1800, Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyramus
de Candolle, a botanist from Genevra, in his work "Geographie
Botanique Raisonnee" also claimed that wheat was of Asian
origins, but from the valley of Jordan, where still today,
wild ears of wheat continue to wave in the wind which blows
over the western hills of the great river.
According to a more modern theory soft-grained cereals (Triticum
monocucuum) were probably of western Asian origins, while
hard-grained cereals (Triticum dicocuum) originated in the
mountains of the western Africa.
The actual date of the first wheat is also a mystery. It,
however, looked very little like the wheat of today, the
results of many cross-fertilizations.
But it is certain that grains of cereals were found in
caverns of Neolithic age (6,000 to 5,000 years B.C.), in
amphorae of the pyramid of Dashur (3,000 B.C.) and from the
same period cereals have been found in instruments for
grinding in Assyria and Babylon. It is also known that the
Chionese cultivated cereals from 2,700 B.C.
From grain to flour
At the beginning the harvested grain was crushed between two
stones using them like a pestle and mortar or ground by
rubbing them together.
Representations of ancient Egypt show that this hard work
was done by the slaves who worked on their knees on the
stone to grind the grain was always done by the women, even
when in the East, hand mills began to be used.
Later the primitive grinders were replaced by other more
powerful ones, then after, in ancient Greece and Rome they
were driven by slaves or animals such as donkeys or horses.
Bread is money
The first bakers were Egyptians who used this valuable food
not only for eating but also for making it the basis of
their life. Owning a lot of bread meant being wealthy. |
Selling bread in Cairo - Photo © David Haberlah |
With a little imagination the many ovens all over Egypt
could have been considered their mints, as bread represented
the currency of the kingdom. Salaries were based on a
variable number of loaves.
An average farm worker earned three loaves per day, as well
as two pitchers of beer, another invention of the
Egyptians. Also the priests were paid in bread and beer.
The high Priest of the temple, who had the right to wear on
his shoulders a tiger skin, a sign of his position, received
900 fine-grained loaves, 36,000 loaves cooked on the coals
and 360 pitchers of beer each year.
The Pharaoh was the god of wheat, who every harvest had to
pour on the grains to be distributed to the salaried
officials and those used for maintaining the royal house. He
was the owner of numerous irrigation canals which lined the
fields.
The Nile - Photo © freemanar |
The great river
The grain harvest depended
on the movements of the Nile.
During the month of June its
waters were swollen by the rains. In July they grew
consistently and finally in August overflowed flooding the
bordering lands.
In September small lakes formed and then
dried up in November as the water drained off slowly until
January.
The Egyptian calendar was based on the rhythms of the Nile.
The 12 months of the year were divided into 3 seasons of 120
each - they were appropriately called the flooding, the
seed-sowing, the harvesting. |
The invention of leavening
The legend goes
that a young peasant girl forgot to put the bread into the
oven and so the dough remained in the kitchen for a couple
of days, fermenting and swelling. The girl didn't have the
courage to throw it away and finally put it into the oven
anyway. Only after did she realize that this bread after
baking had become light inside and crusty outside.
The news spread and finally reached the eras of the Pharaoh
who wished to try this strange bread and on finding it
absolutely delicious, had eyes on the inventor of the first
leavened bread, of course a beautiful girl, he fell in love
with her and married her.
Of course, the reality is more down-to-earth- the day surely
arrived when someone decided that it was useless to leave
all the bread dough to go sour and it was enough to keep
just a small piece of the soured dough adding it to the
fresh dough and letting it in turn ferment. From them, the
soured dough for leavening was jealously guarded in every
Egyptian house.
The mistery unveiled
We have had to wait for the advent of the modern chemistry
to unveil the mystery of leavening. The air is rich in many
bacteria waiting to be fed.
Yeast spores are deposited on traces of sugar contained in
the mixture of flour and water, breaking down the sugar onto
alcohol and carbonic acid. The bubbles of carbonic acid in
the dough make it swell up and go soft.
During the baking the carbonic acid and alcohol evaporate.
The alcohol disappears completely while the carbonic acid
leaves traces of its presence in the bread's pores.
The Greek age
The Greeks were originally shepherds and warriors and even
after having abandoned their nomadic life they still
remained attached to their customs for a long time.
Wealth
was not measured in cultivated fields but in the number of
animals owned. Wheat didn't grow easily and must have been
imported from the East. Barley was easier and was eaten
roasted or even crushed.
It's only in the 5th century B.C. do we find bread worthy of
the name. There were 50, and according to some 72 different
types, all made with different types of flour - from rye and
oatmeal, while wheat flour was the last used. The Greeks
were the first to bake bread, let's say on an industrial
level. The ovens were amalgamated under corporations and
they began to work during the night. |
Greek bread - Photo © ola lazar |
The first public ovens were set up where housewives could
take their already prepared dough to be baked. The proximity
to Egypt and the continual trading between the two nations
allowed the Greeks to be familiar with the leavening process
from the earliest times.
The first bread-making goes back to 240 B.C. and was
recorded by Crisippo of Thiana.
Rome
At the beginning the early Romans were content with eating
the grains roasted or boiled or even powdered, using the
puls, eaten with oil or vegetables - chicory, lettuce and
nettles. In a pan, called an artopta, they cooked focaccia
made from spelt, cheese and honey.
They called it placenta and in using this vocabulary they
thus distinguished the bread products made from flour, oil
and salt.
From the beginning the Romans didn't place much importance
on the ingredients and form of the bread, but over time and
thanks to continual contacts with other peoples, it was
improved.
Roman bread underwent many changes. In the period of
Augustus, the shapes and ingredients became many and yeast,
which remained unknown until the wars with Macedonia, began
to be used more skillfully.
The shapes of the bread were very varied and often very
well-studied. The most usual were in the shapes of squares,
rolls and sticks and almost always marked in heels making
it easy to divide. For feasts or even out for pure vanity,
the shapes could be changed - into the shape of a lyre if a
very important poet was invited, into interwoven rings if it
was a wedding feast, into dice if the host had gathered
together fellow gamblers, or into a key, a plait, a flower,
a dagger and so on.
The Romans were good bread-eaters - for breakfast they
dinked it in red wine, at lunch they preferred it
accompanying vegetables or olives, at dinner with eggs or
honey.
Soldiers were given a portion of bread of a kilogram per day
and were prohibited to sell or trade it.
The earliest bakers were often freed slaves, often
enterprising and capable men. Aware of their power they
ended up forming corporations which became increasingly
important. In the era of Augustus there were 300 of them in
Rome and they owned real estate, some of which they had been
granted by the state in recognition of their worth. They
owned the bakeries and the capital to manage them - slaves,
animals and mills. They also exploited the earnings from
properties in the various provinces.
Water mill - Photo © funadium |
The mills
The water-mill was invented by Vitruvio under Ceasar and
author of De Architectura and an expert in agriculture and
hydraulics. They were not widespread and began to be used
from the early centuries of the popular period. In 398 it
seems there was only one of them, on the Gianicolo and a law
of the time stated that the water had to be used first by
the mill before any other use.
Eventually they became spread all over Europe and if most of
mills worked off the fresh waters or rivers, torrents and
streams, there were some which also used salt water. They
were built right on the beaches and operated by the tides.
At high tide the water entered through a gate to a large
pool and when this was full the doors closed automatically
due to the water pressure of the low tide.
The wind-mill followed the water-mill, perhaps the only
technical invention to come out of medieval times. |
To build water-mills the inhabitants of the plains would have
had to create canals and artificial rises in water levels
and the mills would have had to have been constructed below
the level of the water table so the water could have fallen
with enough force to drive them. Instead, with a wind-mill
built at right height, the windy country of northern Europe
would have provided all the energy needed.
To construct the first wind-mill in 1393 in Spira, Germany,
a Dutchman was called upon, building one with a moveable head
and sails set to catch even a minimal breath of wind. In
Holland where waterways flow very slowly, the importance of
this invention was immediately appreciated. Thus, Holland
became the main European center for the building of
wind-mills.
The wind-mill, along with the tulip, is still considered
today the symbol of this country.
The dream of white flour
In 1800 the largest mills operated on steam, thanks to the
invention of James Watt and Oliver Evans.
However, the millers complained about their millstones - not
hard enough, they had to be continually renewed. They tried
a harder stone but over time also this was worn away by the
grain. Thus, the white flour that we know so well today
continued to be a dream. A certain engineer, Muller, a
builder of mills and a highly respected man, came up with
the idea of crushing the grain instead of grinding it. To do
this it would be necessary to fix iron cylinders to the
steam mills driving it a hundreds of revolutions per minute
and turning in the opposite direction.
Finding Swiss businessmen ready to finance it, the engineer,
vaunting work already carried out in Poland and in Russia,
began to make plans to construct his invention. A fantastic
invention. The mill had five floors, each fitted with
cylinders. From top to bottom there were different types of
grinding, from the coarsest on the fifth floor to the finest
on the first. Unfortunately the invention was enormous and
therefore slower than the normal mills. It produced less
flour and its costs were higher than the older mills. Ruined
by accusations of incompetence, Muller disappeared. However,
his invention did not disappear. It was studied again and
improved by Jacob Sulzberger, an engineer who had never been
involved with the mills but who was able to do what his
predecessor had only projected. He completely rebuilt the
cylinder system, placing two pairs on the same armature, one
set over the other and causing each group to move
separately. The iron cylinders were all located on the first
floor while the lightest machinery was on the upper floors.
The mill worked well from the first moment and was also sold
abroad, especially in Hungary, a major wheat producer and
which, in a short time, became the world leader in the mill
industry.
With the advent of the cylinder-driven mill the old dream
for white flour was realized. It was at the World Exposition
in Vienna in 1873 that the Americans were introduced to this
type of flour for the first time. In 1879, Washburn,
governor of Minnesota, invited Hungarian engineers to his
state beginning the large scale American wheat industry.
Courtesy of AOLMAIA small groups tours in Tuscany
Breads and cereals
Breadsticks
Coppia Ferrarese IGP
Crackers
Farro della Garfagnana IGP
Pane Casareccio di Genzano IGP
Pane di Altamura DOP |
