Fun-Facts (for Bread-Nerds!)

Here are some bread curious facts found around the internet. Enjoy!

1 - In the Stone Age, people used to make solid cakes using an early form of flour, made from crashing barley and wheat with stones.

2 - Charred crumbs of flatbread were found in an archaeological site in the Black Desert in Jordan, and were dated between 14,600 and 11,600 years ago. They were made by hunter - gatherers with wild wheat, barley and plant roots and this makes them the earliest bread known made from cultivated wheat.

3 - Ancient Egyptians used mouldy breads to treat infected burn wounds. In a way they were already utilising the antibiotic effect of mould discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928.

4 - In the 1600s bread was baked in stone ovens: the bottoms were often covered with ash and soot and if you were wealthy you'd cut the bottom crust off and just eat the rest. From here we get the definition of "upper crust".

5 - People used soft bread crumbs to erase pen marks until the eraser was invented.

6 - A special rye bread traditionally made in Iceland, called Rúgbrauð is steamed in traditional wooden casks buried into the ground near a hot spring. It's a crustless, dark and very dense bread.

7 - The Assize of Bread and Ale (1266) was the first law in British history to regulate the production and sale of bread, and it was the most significant and long lasting commercial law in medieval England, amended only at the beginning of the 19th century and finally repealed in1863. The assize adjusted the weight of the bread with the price of wheat.

8 - In 2008 a European directive abolished 800 years of British history and permitted all bakers to prepare loaves of any size, whilst before that the law stated that the weight of bread had to be a pound or multiples.

9 - In San Francisco the Boudin Bakery still uses their 170 years old mother dough to make the Original San Francisco sourdough.

10 - The country with the most diverse selection of bread is Germany, with about 200 types.

 

Sources: https://www.kickassfacts.com/bread-facts/

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wikiBread

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rúgbrauð

            https://boudinbakery.com/our-story/

            https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44846874

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assize_of_Bread_and_Ale

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assize_of_Bread_and_Ale