Today most people know bread as a food made from wheat flour mixed with water and yeast or baking powder. But do you know the history behind the bread we eat? Let's take a look.
Bread in Thailand
Bread arrived in Thailand during the Ayutthaya period, when Europeans who settled here brought wheat flour with them and baked bread as they had in their home countries, where bread and potatoes were staples. Europeans didn't eat steamed rice as Thais do, and rice was hard to carry as provisions. Bread was far easier to eat and store than cooked rice, because it was dry, light and kept longer: wrapped in a dry cloth, it lasted several days.
Thailand borrowed the word for bread directly from the French "Pan", pronounced "pang". Thais saw it as more of a snack (khanom), so they put "khanom" in front of "pang", giving us the word "khanom pang" used today.
Bread in Ancient Egypt
In ancient Egypt, poor slaves who didn't want to waste anything would add leftover old dough to freshly mixed dough each time they baked. This made the baked bread light, fluffy and tasty. Wall paintings in many tombs show people holding bread as offerings to the gods. Archaeologists have also found ancient flour millstones and cone-shaped clay bread ovens, believed to be the forerunner of the tandoor.
Ancient Egyptians divided bread into two types:
- Risen bread, eaten every day.
- Matzos, a flat bread eaten only on special religious occasions.
The ancient Egyptians' bread-making knowledge spread across the Mediterranean, ancient Jerusalem and the towns along Middle Eastern trade routes, and bread making has been widespread ever since. Bread in ancient Egypt was small, similar to today's dinner rolls.
Today, bread making is considered an art that requires training to master. At the same time, modern, efficient tools and labour-saving equipment keep being developed, from microcomputer-controlled ovens to automatic dough dividers and rounders, helping bread making continue to advance.
Bread Around the World
- France: the French have a strong taste for bread making, and in the past they brought their methods to Vietnam. Vietnamese bread therefore follows French recipes, with a dense crumb rather than the soft, airy texture of Thai bread.
- Britain: the British like round rolls about 12 cm across, in soft and hard versions. The soft one, called a breakfast roll, is eaten at breakfast. The hard one, called a dinner roll, is eaten with the evening meal; it is very hard and is served with tea to make it easier and tastier to eat.
- Denmark: Danes love sweet bread, and theirs is very sweet; it is called Danish bread.
- Germany: Germans make bread in many shapes, such as sticks and loaves, small and large, including giant loaves that feed many people, as well as a double-looped twist called the pretzel.
- Japan: the Japanese call bread "pan". They love bread: walk into a Japanese bakery and you'll find every kind of bread seen around the world.
Bread is a baked good leavened with yeast. Its main ingredients are wheat flour, yeast, salt and water, with other ingredients such as eggs, sugar, milk, butter and fruit. Kneaded together, these create countless types of bread, such as sweet bread and fruit bread.
Key Ingredients
Wheat
Bread relies on gluten, a protein found in high amounts in wheat. Rice, by contrast, contains only a little gluten, which is why rice can't be used to make bread.
Yeast
Yeast is essential to bread making. It is added to make bread rise, because yeast feeds on the sugars in the flour and produces carbon dioxide, giving the bread its shape. Bread yeast comes in many forms, such as fresh and dried. To use yeast properly, you first need to activate it by dissolving it in water at about 38°C. Yeast is harder to work with, but it gives a better crumb and flavour than baking powder. The most common bread yeast is Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Baking powder
Baking powder, sodium bicarbonate, is also important in bread making as an alternative to yeast. When mixed with water, it produces carbon dioxide just as yeast does. Don't use too much, though, or the bread will taste bitter and astringent, and the rise will be coarser than with yeast. Its advantages are that it is easier to use and keeps longer. There are two kinds: single-acting baking powder releases all its gas at once when mixed into the dough, while double-acting baking powder releases gas twice, once when mixed into the dough and again when heated in the oven.
