Humans have eaten some form of bread since the Neolithic era, when cereal grains were crushed and mixed with water to form a thick paste that could be cooked over the fire and consumed. The Egyptians, in approximately 2600 BC were lucky enough to have a sufficient amount of wild yeasts in the air from the beer brewing to accidently discover its uses in leavening bread. Workers were often paid in loaves of bread. Paintings in the pyramids show that the dead were buried with loaves of bread, to provide sustenance in the afterlife. (The British Museum has one of these loaves--4000 years old!)

Greek sailors and merchants brought the Egyptian flour back to Greece, where bread baking flourished. Rome took over the enterprise after their conquest of Greece, and in 150 BC formed the first Baker's Guilds.

Guilds were not only a way to garner professional respect, but a way to protect the public. The baker's guilds in England were held to strict standards, with harsh punishments for overcharging and/or adulterating the bread.

During the early Middle Ages, much of the bread returned to unleavened loaves, although the Normans reintroducted leavened bread in 1191. By the early 13th century, millers became more important--their job of turning wheat to flour not only allowed for more gradations of flour, but the practice of keeping up to a quarter of the flour produced made millers quite wealthy and thus of no little importance in their towns and villages.

The lack of millers in the early days of colonial America, along with the lack of wheat, posed problems for the housewife. How to make bread without the basic ingredients? The presence of corn quickly led to the invention of cornbread (alternately referred to johnny-cake or journey cake). Even after wheat became common, those in the Southern colonies had trouble making loaves of bread rise due to the high heat and humidity that killed off the necessary wild yeasts. Biscuits became the favored flour-based bread, while cornbread remained popular as well.

The advent of roller flour mills in the 1800s led to even more highly processed flour--which led to lighter and whiter loaves, even if not as nutritious as the coarser whole wheat kind. By 1825 a German baker was able to create cakes of yeast, package them for mass sale, and make the baking of bread easier for ever after. Even today, however, there are those who swear that breads baked without commercially processed yeasts are superior, and go through a great deal of trouble in order to coax the wild yeasts out of the air by fermenting their flour and water starter mixture. This is a tricky process, however, and one that can easily lead to failure--too much cold, too much heat, and the batch will 'die'. However, it will make you appreciate the great efforts of housewives in days long past to put the staff of life on the table.