Snack-urday 167

Instead of a recipe today, here is some trivia --

Bread is a basic food made from a flour-and-water dough, normally with yeast, baked in an oven. No other food is as redolent of myth, rite, and tradition as bread. Central to meals until almost the end of the second millennium (more so than meat), it is indeed the 'staff of life.' Breadmaking dates back to at least 9000 BC; the first breads were cooked on heated bakestones, many of which survive. The invention of leavened bread (around 5000 BC) is attributed to the Egyptians, who made bread from millet and barley and may have discovered fermentation by chance when a piece of dough became sour. In the Middle Ages, the bakery trade developed in diversity and complexity. Part of the baker's art is the careful choice of ingredients and the manipulation of factors such as oven temperature, length of baking time, and humidity, all of which affect the crumb, thickness, and quality of bread crust.