From the staff of life to everybody’s bellyache, how bread has changed through the ages.
Thousands of years ago humans discovered and developed the art of growing grain, and Egypt, the world’s first superpower, based its entire wealth on the cultivation of wheat. Still playing an important role in the modern diet, commercial bread is now far-removed from the nutritional powerhouse it once was, and increasing numbers of people find themselves unable to tolerate the modern loaf.
While the Egyptians may well have discovered sourdough fermentation by chance, bread soon became central to daily life, and bread has been a vital part of society ever since. The development of civilisation can be closely linked to the history of bread making, with archaeologists discovering fossilised bread in many different parts of the globe.
Traditionally, farmers worked in harmony with the environment, but in the years following World War II, the Third Agricultural Revolution, also known as the 'green revolution', took place. Both the industrial and the green revolution also changed the way food was produced. The slow process of grinding flour through stone mills was replaced by roller mills, which allow easy removal of much of the husk and, with it, valuable nutrients.
Roller mills allowed production of large volumes of white flour over a short time and the refined flour produced was uniform and had greater 'keeping qualities’ than stone-ground wholemeal flour. Unfortunately, the heat of the rollers damages valuable vitamins and minerals, leaving a product that has very little nutritional value.
Centuries of envying the rich for their white bread and cakes had whipped up an appetite for the ‘fine white soft’ bread, and its ‘ready when you are’ nature fitted nicely with women’s emancipation from tedious housework in the post-World War II era. Naturally occurring yeasts were replaced by baker’s yeast, which worked faster but required added sugar to leaven the bread.
In the early 1960s, British scientists discovered that adding hard fats, chemicals and extra yeast to their low-protein white flour, made a softer loaf that could be baked in a much shorter time yet keep twice as long as traditional bread. Known as the Chorleywood method, it changed breadmaking forever and has become standard practice in commercial bakeries around the world, including New Zealand. (ISABEL PASCH)
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