At least one item on the menu for this issue’s Christmas meal might have been found on a similar menu – if there was such a thing – 8,000 years ago.
Buns, or wheat-based bread in one form or another, have been a staple of people’s diets for literally thousands of years.
In fact, on display at the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology at the University of Memphis in Tennessee is a triangular loaf of bread estimated to be 4,000 years old.
In photos it looks more like a triangular stone, but to be fair, not many food items would look very appetizing after sitting in a cupboard for 40 centuries.
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This particular piece of rather stale bread was originally placed, along with a number of other objects, under the foundation of the mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II, a pharaoh who ruled from around 2050 to 2010 B.C.
When it was fresh out of the oven it probably wouldn’t have been totally foreign to our modern palates. In fact, it might even pass for an expensive
artisan-style bread.
It also provided ancient peoples, especially peasants and slaves, with the same basic protein, starch and trace nutrients as modern bread.
There was one major drawback, however.
As a result of the rather crude bread-making process of the time, stones and sand were often unwelcome ingredients, resulting in severe damage to the teeth and eventual tooth loss.
Bread in that era was generally made from Emmer, a low yielding, two-metre tall, small-grained wheat that is distantly related to modern durum wheat.
The ancient Greeks picked up and improved on the technology for making bread from the Egyptians. Then the baking of bread became a separate profession, not just a domestic chore, and bread was sold to the public.
Greek bakers dominated the bread trade in Rome. Through the expansion of the Roman empire, their baking traditions came to influence vast areas of the world, including western Europe.
Bakers were held in high regard and subject to numerous regulations. For example, the Roman bakers’ guild, known as the Collegium Pistorum, prohibited bakers and their children from taking up any other trade, and they were prohibited from attending performances or mixing with gladiators so as not to be contaminated by the vices of ordinary people.
The Romans ate a variety of breads, including such things as oyster bread, cakebread, bread made from rye, acorns or millet, crusty loaves, cheese bread and, for the wealthy, rich breads made with milk, eggs and butter. But the most prized was white bread made from wheat.
In the Middle Ages, bread was one of the few foods available on a consistent basis to the peasantry.
It eventually became a staple of the working class, with labourers taking hunks of bread into the field to sustain themselves during the day.
In England, thick slices of bread known as trenchers were served with a variety of toppings, until in the mid-1700s John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, hit on the idea of adding a second slice of bread on top.
Bread’s world history
- The word ‘companion’ is from Latin, meaning ‘one who shares bread.’
- The storming of the Bastille in 1789, which signaled the beginning of the French Revolution, was started by a mob protesting bread prices.
- The first true breads were probably developed around 2500 B.C., when fermented dough was accidentally added to flour, making the flat cakes rise.
- In ancient Turkey and Egypt, a baker selling adulterated bread would be nailed by the ear to the doorpost of his shop.
- The word lord comes from the Old English hlaford, or loaf ward, meaning the person who guarded the bread supply and was expected to share it with others.
- The importance of bread is evident in the slang reference to money as ‘bread’ and the expression ‘bread and butter’ meaning
the means of earning one’s livelihood.
