BREAD AND BREAD MAKING. Historical.— Baking is probably the very oldest industry man engaged in. Wheat tombs of the pyramids show, had perfected both baking and brewing 1,500 years before the beginning of the Christian era, and the Old Testament makes mention of a mill known to the Assyrians. These occupations had become organized industries. In Egypt, in brewing as well as in baking bread, the grain was crushed, mixed with water to a dough and fer mented by the addition of fermenting bread mash, which was then baked. The fermented beverage was simply prepared from slightly sprouted barley or other grain, by crushing it, mixing with water to a mash, slightly baking and barley, the oldest cereals known to have been cultivated, have been found together with the ploughshare fashioned of wood and the stone hand-mill consisting of a hollowed stone and a stone ball-shaped crusher among the remains left by prehistoric man de posited in his burial places or found embedded in the earth over or near which he had his dwelling places. These implements, together with arrow heads, spear heads and battle axes, all of flint or stone (Stone Age of man) gave evidence that man at that time was unac quainted with the use of metal, and that his primitive culture must have dated back some five to ten thousand years before the beginning of the Christian era.
Food of Primitive Man.— While the finding of the remains of wheat and barley and the ploughshare gave evidence of agricultural pur suit, the bones of domestic animals and wild animals and the remains of clams and oysters indicated that his diet was quite a variegated the dough, breaking the bread, making a mash with water and adding fermented mash once more for fermentation. The fermenting bever age then supplies the yeast for baking.
From Handicraft to Industry.— How bak ing developed from a simple handicraft, with a stone hand-mill furnishing the grist or meal, and the baking of a batter of meal and water on ashes, or over redhot coals, or on a hot flat stone, into a highly developed art, through the ages, and then into one of the most important industries engaged in by man, would indeed form an interesting story for this article, would space permit. Man learned to use bronze metal to
fashion his tools, utensils, weapons, long before he had found iron. The bronze age of man, which lasted probably upward of a thousand years, preceded that of the iron age. In this period iron took the place of bronze and stone. Unlike the use of bronze which had spread westward and northward from Asia and Africa iron was first discovered and made use of by one; that he employed the domestic animals to ease his own work, while remnants of woven fabrics, especially from flax fibre, indicated that he had learned to cultivate plants for other than food purposes.
Oldest Form of Baking.— The oldest bread was made in the form of cakes or fritters, simply prepared by mixing wheat or barley meal to a batter with water and milk, and bak ing these batter cakes, of, may be, the size and form of our present day griddle cakes, on hot ashes or over redhot coals, or a hot stone which represented the first bread pan and oven com bined. Salt was probably the only other in .gredient besides the meal and water and milk, as there certainly was no baking powder and yeast was not used until brewing beer from germinated barley had become known, though sour dough bread was probably as well known as sour milk products.
The Egyptians, as the remains found in the the Celts in northwestern Europs, from where it spread eastward and southward.
Primitive Baking Pans.— Flat sheets of iron, rounded and provided with a wooden handle, early in the culture of our European ancestry took the place of the hot stone, hot ashes or coals in baking flat cakes, and this led naturally to the development of the bread pan and the employment of these singly or in larger number to the development of the bakers' oven, which in the time of the Egyptians was fashioned out of clay with a flat bottom and arched roof, of varying size for household and shop use.