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