The Bessing of the Nile

Bread wasn't always a plastic-wrapped squishy white loaf or even a brick-oven baked baguette. According to Reay Tannahill in Food in History, the best cook-out side dish a Neolithic homemaker could offer was unleavened flatbread, baked on a hot stone. A gritty, high-fiber griddlecake -- obvious from the worn-down teeth found in fossil skulls. That early baker didn't lack leavening agents: the problem was with the grain.

Wheat had to be toasted (parched) before thrashing it, or the seed would not separate from the husk. But parching the wheat destroyed the gluten-forming proteins. These proteins, in contact with yeast, produce air bubbles, then rising, and then a light porous loaf.

However, Praise Geb! (Egyptian god of the earth), a momentous event occured at the beginning of the Egyptian dynastic period. A new wheat strain appeared, which could be threshed without toasting it first. A luxury item was born: raised bread.

Today is a cold, but sunny, Saturday, and I'm planning to bake. And as the smell of fresh bread fills my house, I'll think on the Nile.