History of Baking in France

    People travel all around the world for the different foods and treats. People go to Asia for their seafood, or India for rice and curry, but if you are going to France then you are going to be trying their sweet macaroons and their delicious baguettes. You do not go to France to visit seafood restaurants or fast food places, you go to visit the multiple bakeries that are on every corner of the street you are on.
    Although baking bread began in Rome and Egypt, France is known for their amazing pastries and artisan baking. France is well known all around the world for the delicious croissant that they created many years ago, it is also known for developing the rich choux and puff pastries. In the 17th and 18th century French bakers started coming up with new recipes for their treats and bread. During this time (17th-18th century) the brioches which are a sweet type of bread was invented, napoleons, cream puffs, and the eclairs which are very popular throughout France were also some of the many pastries created at this time.
    As bread making and pastry making was very popular throughout France it did not stop even during the French Revolution. ”At the time of the French Revolution in the late 1700’s, the average Frenchman was reported to have eaten around 1-2lbs of bread a day” (http://www.abigailsbakery.com/bread-recipes/bread-history-french.htm) this sentence shows us that even though there were wars going on throughout France they still cared and wanted their bread and pastries with all the craziness going on around. During this time in France, most of the baking was done at home.  After the wars were over, and the country was growing more and more so were little bakeries. Paris became on the first open air cafes in Europe which delivered their pastries and bread throughout Paris.
     Many small bakeries were opening up all over the country. Most of these bakeries used large brick ovens that were heated with wood or coal. They used what was called a “peel” which was like a large wooden spoon, to put the dough into the ovens and to remove it from the ovens. Even today brick ovens are still used to cook some of the most delicious bread. The bread made in France have their own style/art. Today France is known for mastering artisan baking.     Getting sick of having to wake up at 4 am to start making bread and shaping it into thick flat loaves, French bakers came up with the idea of forming their bread loaves into long and thin shapes which we now know as baguettes. They sometimes made their bread loaves as long as 6 feet, which ended up looking a lot like crowbars. (https://foodimentary.com/2012/03/21/a-history-of-the-baguette/)
    The croissant is a very different story than the baguette. It is told that Marie Antoinette (who is my 9th great grandma) was the person who supposedly created the croissant. Although she never fully created it she only had some impact on how it was made. Marie Antoinette first lived in Austria before coming to France at the age of 15. She started to miss the delicious kipfel pastry from her home. She started craving it so badly that she requested that her royal bakers try to re-make it, but as they failed in creating it perfectly, they ended up creating what we know today as a croissant. Because of Marie Antoinette’s desire for kipfel’s and her royal bakers creating a croissant, she was given the glory for creating croissants.
      Another very popular pastry that was created in France was the éclair. The French name éclair means lightning, which is a good name for this pastry because they are light and fluffy and full of cream.  As we are not a 100% sure who created the French éclair we are most positive that Marie-Antoine Carême, a famous pastry chef for French royalty was the one who created it in the late 1700’s-early 1800’s. As he loved experimenting with different recipes and baking ideas he soon created the eclair while being one of the most famous pastry chefs that worked for the French royals.  As being one of the most delicious pastry’s from France it made its way to the United States of America and has become a well-known desert that is well loved not only by the French but by the Americans as well. France has proven itself as well as the world through the years that they have some of the best bread, pastry’s, and bakeries in the world.

















https://www.craftsy.com/blog/2014/03/french-eclairs/
http://www.puckles.com.au/pages/a-history-of-eclairs
http://epicureandculture.com/croissant/
http://manchesterhistorian.com/2013/paris-patisserie-past/
https://foodimentary.com/2012/03/21/a-history-of-the-baguette/

The Begining of Baking in Europe

When did baking start? As we do not have a clear date of when baking started we have estimated that it started around 2000-4000 B.C. We believe that baking started during the Neolithic or New Stone Age in Europe. Baking first started in Europe. It originally started with crushed grains and water, forming a thick paste that was cooked over a fire. It wasn’t declared as baking but it was the closest thing to it.  Around 2600 B.C. the Egyptians were the first to discover ways to make the bread rise using wild yeast that was found in the air. Their baking skills kept growing as they were tryinga out multiple techniques and using different ingredients to make breads and such things.

Rome started hearing about the Egyptians and their baking and soon started baking themselves. By 100 B.C. Rome was growing with more than 150 commercial bakeries all around the city.  As people came to visit Rome and Egypt they were able to learn themselves how to bake breads and pastries and went home to try it out. As they brought these bread ideas and baking skills home, they started to spread throughout their cities and then throughout the country.  

As people started coming to the United States of America from Europe in the early 1800’s baking breads and treats came as well. People began learning how to make bread and treats from their homes. Baking bread was becoming very popular throughout the states so people began opening little stores to sell their homemade breads and pastries. It was not until around 1890 that the first official mechanical bakery was invented/opened in the United States.  Not only was the mechanical baking tool invented, the bread slicer was also invented by Otto Rohwedder in 1927.

            Baking was becoming such a big thing in both the United States of America and in Europe. Bakers began baking breads with different types of flours such as wheat flour, rice flour, almond flour, and they were able to come up with different types of breads. Not only did they play around with different types of flours they also started adding things to either make it sweet or salty, and to make it rise. They soon learned that adding sugar was a good way to make a sweet bread and with a little bit of salt it was perfect for plain slices of bread with homemade jam on it. Wheat bread started to become one of the most favored types of bread in the 1800’s.  

            People were starting to realize what was happening with baking so they started inventing things to add to their baking to make it better. Although yeast as already being used to help the bread and doughs rise, in 1869 we learn that “the Fleischmann brothers created America's first commercially produced yeast, a cake of compressed grain, barley malt, and brewer's yeast.” (http://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/Bread-History-America) We also learn that Eben Horsford who was a chemist at Harvard, created baking powder which is made of sodium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate, and starch. This baking powder that he invented helps the bread to rise without having to use starters and helps it add quick breads to their repertories.

People started learning about different ways that they could bake bread or treats, while figuring out at the same time the different ways of making them. They started using brick ovens instead of baking it over a fire, and they started putting the dough in tins. Forming bread by hand was becoming a fun and popular way to bake decorative breads and treats, but as it took too much time and was harder they used the tins more often than forming the loaves by hand.

    Bakeries were starting to become very popular in the states around the time of 1870’.  In 1938 some of the commercial bakers started enriching their white breads with multiple vitamins and iron to help fight off and prevent diseases in the bread. As they were doing this with the white breads they started doing it with most of their breads as well. Only a few of the bakers would do this, as the word went around about what they were doing, more and more commercial bakers started doing the same thing. The FDA soon started requiring that bakeries or people selling bread needed to have their breads made with lots of vitamins and iron in order to sell it. With the bakeries and baking companies growing tremendously the FTC made it official in 1977 that the ingredient list must be put on the packaging of the breads and pastries.  

https://www.europeanbakers.com/EB_AllAboutBread/BreadHistory/index.cfm
http://www.joyofbaking.com/History.html
http://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/Bread-History-America

About the Author

Hi, 

     my name is Jane Brown I am a 17-year-old who loves baking. Let me tell you my story. At the age of 9, I was diagnosed with Acute Undifferentiated Leukemia and was sent to Primary Children's hospital. As a young sick girl, I went through multiple rounds of Chemo and many drugs that were hard on my body. My doctors told me that I needed a transplant, as a little girl I had no idea what a transplant was. I soon learned after many talks from my doctors as well as my parents what a transplant was. I needed a bone marrow transplant but I had a cord blood stem cell transplant. After many months in and out of the hospital and many check-ups, I was put in remission. I was blessed with many miracles in my life that I am very grateful for. I came home thinking that I would be able to go back to my normal life and be able to be a normal little girl again. I thought that I would be able to go back to school after missing 2 years of it and that I would be the same as all the kids in my grade.
           I thought wrong, I was the smallest of my grade, I couldn't compete in the same sports and activities as the kids in my class, and I felt like I was the dumbest in my classroom. I tried to play sports like I did before I was sick but it was hard for me. I realized that I was weak and how my body was different than it was before. I always hated having to watch my siblings and all of my friends playing sports and being able to do a lot of things that I couldn't. It made me feel bad having to watch all the kids my age and older being able to live a normal life and not have to worry if they got a cough and felt a little sick. I was sick of watching them on the soccer field running around full of energy while I was sitting in my chair with a mask on. I did not like sitting around and I became super bored. 
      My mom helped me to feel less lazy by letting me help cook our family dinners and treats for our amazing neighbors. I soon realized that I enjoyed it, I had finally been able to find something that I was able to do without feeling tired or dumb. I loved being able to crack the eggs into the frying pan, or beating the whipped cream with the beaters. As I grew more experienced with cooking and baking I started doing it by myself. I started out baking simple things like cookies with a little bit of help from my mom. I thought I was the most amazing and talented 9-year-old girl because I was able to bake chocolate chip cookies. I still love baking cookies today. 
         As the years have passed and I have grown up, I have been able to bake more complex things. Kids my age are usually going to sport camps, but I have been able to go to cooking and baking classes. I have been able to learn a lot about the proper way to bake. While taking all these baking classes I have learned that I love baking bread the most. I plan on learning about where and when baking started. Being able to know where it was started can help my knowledge of baking grow. It can help me learn more how baking was done in the older days, and what the difference is of how it was back then compared to how it is today. 
    I have always dreamed of traveling the world and learning different recipes and ways of baking. If I am wanting to travel around the world I need to know where the most amazing baking is, where baking started, and where it is the most different from what I know.
      One of the reasons why I started this blog was to learn different recipes from different cultures, learn about the baking of the world, and to share some of my favorite recipes with you. If I am wanting to travel around the world I need to know where the most amazing baking is, where baking started, and where it is the most different from what I know. It is my dream to be able to share my experience of learning about when and where baking originally started and how it has grown, and that is why I have started this blog. 

I hope you enjoy my blog about baking with the world,

Jane Brown