One of the oldest types of prepared food that dates back to the Neolithic era is bread. The first one made used grain paste (that was made from ground cereal grains and water) and is said to have been developed by accident when someone was experimenting with water and grain flour.
They would leave the dough out to get some exposure from air so that it could get airborne yeast to make it rise while cooking. Some people used the foam skimmed off the top of beer to produce a type of yeast to add to the mixture so they could make a food product that was a lighter kind of bread than others.
For those that did not have beer and drank wine instead, they would grape juice and flour that had already begun to ferment as a type of yeast. But the most common way of leavening your bread was to use a small piece of dough from the previous day to form a sourdough starter.
Back in the year 1961, they developed a way to reduce the time it took for fermentation and the time it took to make a loaf. They used a mechanical machine that has a high energy mixing power to produce more loafs in less time.
They have also harnessed yeast in a much easier and simpler way. These things have speed up the process of making bread.
Now there are hardly any people who make this food in their home. They are able to just run to the grocery store to buy a loaf and do not have to spend the time making it.
Most people would take a slice of homemade bread before store bought because it tastes so much better and is a lot fresher. There are many different types of this food including; leavened, unleavened, flatbread, wheat, white, rye, barley, maize, oat, Canadian, brown, whole meal, rot, Naan, and sourdough bread.
Leavened bread means that there was yeast or baking soda added to the bead to make it rise. Unleavened is flatbread without these leavening agents.
Ingredients that you need to make it are; salt, flour, water, and yeast (if you want it leavened). You can add other ingredients such as; milk, eggs, sugar, spice, fruit, vegetables, nuts, or seeds.
It is the number one staple food and is usually baked. Sometimes people will steam it or fry on a skillet but most other people will prepare it by baking it.
Keeping it fresh is hard to do because the expiration date comes pretty quickly after it is made. If you wait too long to eat it, then it becomes stale.
If you keep it in a freezer, then you can store it for a lot longer. Putting it in the refrigerator will help the mold to grow a lot slower than if you kept it at room temperature.
But if you leave it in the fridge for too long, then it will get stale because of retro gradation. The soft inside part of it is called the crumb while the outside is known at the crust.
Because the outside of the bread is exposed during the cooking process, it becomes hardened and browned using the sugars, amino acids, and the intense heat. Depending on how it was cooked and the type that is cooked, the crust will turn out differently.
Commercial bread is baked using steam jets that are directed towards it to help keep it more moist and desirable. How many times do people throw away the crust and just eat the inside?
Most people prefer the soft part of it compared to the hard, brown part which does not taste as good. Many other types of food have been derived from the basic loaf.
These include pizza, baguettes, pitas, biscuits, pretzels, bagels, and tortillas. We use the standard water and flour all the time in our cooking.
Bread is very important to almost every culture and is eaten daily. So in your emergency packs, do not forget to store some flour and learn how to make this type of food just in case you ever need to.
Author Resource:-
Tom Selwick has worked the past 21 years in the food storage industry. He suggests buying food storage from a quality company so you know your food will last.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.massagebyben.com/articles/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites 