As I was making bread one afternoon, I was thinking about the homemade bread itself. I'd heard, when I first got started making bread, that once I had been making bread for a while my bread would get better. It wasn't experience that would make the bread better. My home would begin to help the bread because I'd have a natural yeast in the air and on the equipment I typically use. I wasn't terribly sure what that meant but I can say with assurance that indeed I now have a 99% success rate with my bread and dough making efforts. It is a rare day indeed to have a batch of bread not rise beautifully well.
That thought led me to others about bread. I wondered when bread making in the home lost popularity. I also wondered if homemade bread and commercially produced bread were nutritionally different. Then I began to study the history of breadmaking which is centuries and centuries old. As I jotted down notes, I realized I had a timeline of the last 200 years of bread. I thought I'd share that with you today.
1700: Wheat began to increase in popularity as a bread grain over rye and barley.
1709: Magistrates in England were empowered to control type, weight and price of loaves. Breads were categorized as white (whole meal) and household bread (low grade flours).
1757: Bakers in England were accused of adulterating flour with alum lime, chalk and powdered bones to keep it white. Parliament banned all additives, but some bakers ignored the ban.
1783: The first bakery chain was started in England by Christopher Potter of Westminster.
1800: American bakers begin using bread tins making a long loaf rather than the flat round loaves that baked directly on the floor of a bread oven.
1815: English Corn laws were passed to protect wheat growers.
1822: Standards weights for loaves were abolished. Instead, bakers had to weigh loaves in front of customers.
1825: Yeast producer, Tebbenhoff found a way to form yeast into cakes, extracting much of the moisture and creating what was called a cream yeast.
The history of yeast goes as far back as ancient Egypt where it is believed that they skimmed the foam from beer and added to dough, the natural yeasts causing the bread to rise.
In the early 1800's bakers obtained yeast from brewers and used this to make a sweet, fermented bread known as Dutch process.
1826: Whole meal bread is recommended as the healthier choice.
1834: Roller mills were invented in Switzerland. Stone grinding wheat crushed the grain, distributing vitamins and minerals evenly through the flour, but roller milling broke open the wheat berry, allowing the bran and germ to be separated from the flour, which resulted in a finer, whiter flour. However, it was an expensive process and wasn't cost effective until 1870.
1846: The corn laws were repealed and duties on imported grains was removed to prevent starvation of English citizens. North American wheat was importer, and the general population began eating white bread.
1849: The Boudoin Bakery of San Francisco began operations with a sour dough starter they borrowed from a California gold miner. That same starter is still in use today in their bakery.
1867: Reiminghaus used a filter process which allowed the manufacture of bakers yeast called the Viennese process. This quickly took over the French market. Charles Fleischmann brings this process to the U.S.
1868: Fleischmann Brothers created the first commercially produced yeast, a compressed cake made of grain, barley, and brewer's yeast.
1869: Baking powder formula is perfected by Harvard chemist, Eben Horsford enabling bakers to produce quick breads that did not require yeast to rise.
1873: French American Edmund La Croix improves on the Swiss steel roller mill making it a more cost-effective method of grinding wheat.
1887: The National Association of Bakers is formed in England.
1917: Jeweler Otto Rehwedder invents a bread slicing machine. The original blueprints and prototype for a bread slicer are lost in a fire. Although the slicer had been debuted, bakers were reluctant to order it, as they felt sliced bread would dry out more quickly and fall apart. This prototype machine was first used at the shop of Frank Benchis' Chillicothe Baking Company, who was a friend of the inventor.
1928: The first commercially produced sliced loaves are produced July 6 in Chillicothe, Missouri. Because the first loaves looked sloppy, inventor Rehwedder also invented U shaped pins that held the loaf togethers, keeping it looking neat in the package. Early ads instructed buyers to open package at one end, remove the pin and remove the number of slices they wished to use.
1930: Wonder Bread becomes the first nationally distributed sliced loaf bread.
1941: National Research Council in United States asks bread and milling industries to add 8 nutrients to flour and bread to prevent wartime malnutrition. These 8 nutrients included thiamin, folic acid and calcium.
1943: WWII war drives ban bread slicers in the US to save a hundred tons of steel. Customers were more irate over this ban than they were over gas rationing, so much so that two months later, the ban was rescinded and never reinstated.
And just for fun, here's a brief description of the different types of yeast available today:
Cream yeast: the closest to the original yeasts used in the 19th century, it is a suspension of yeast cells in liquid taken from a growth medium. This is used mainly in industrial bakeries and is rarely used in small bakeries.
Compressed cake yeast: Made from a cream yeast from which most of the liquid has been extracted. Many older recipes call for cakes of yeast but modern day ones call for packets or measures of dry yeast.
Active dry yeast: coarse oblong granules with live yeast cells encapsulated in a thick jacket of dry dead cells. It must be rehydrated to use. It lasts for years at room temperature and if frozen will last for 10 years or more.
Instant yeast: looks like active yeast but the granules are smaller and lasts a shorter length of time. Doesn't have to be rehydrated before use.
Rapid Rise yeast: of a smaller granular size, it can be dissolved faster in a dough. This yeast has more carbon dioxide than other types of yeast and rises the dough much faster. Rapid rise is most commonly used in bread machines.
This was a fascinating study to do. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.
6 comments:
I was the one who told you about the yeast building up in your home. A friend told me that and I though she was nuts until we redid our kitchen counters and painted our kitchen. It was many weeks before our bread was anywhere back to what it had been. That made me believe every word she had said.
When we have a house full of family coming in I always grab a loaf of store bought bread just to have on hand in case it is needed and we did not get bread made in time. Fourth of July weekend was the same. I bought a loaf on June 30 and later checked the date and it was July 14. No wonder that store bought bread is so horrible! Yes, we made ourselves eat it after the company was gone but I am so glad it is gone!
This is fascinating! Thank you for doing all the research. Apparently yeast is in the air and that might explain how the Israeli women could make bread. They made unleavened bread for the festivals which is what most congregations use for communion. When I was little we attended the church just up the road and my mom made the communion bread along with the wives of other deacons.
Donna,. My Mom made communion bread too. Thanks for the memory!
I was wondering if your library has an online ordering system where you can get books through Interlibrary Loan? I get all the old ones...Grace Livingston Hill, etc. The system gives you access to all of the libraries possibly in your state(?), delivers them to your local library,and then notifies you when your order is ready for pick-up.
Lisa they do. I could do that I suppose. I also noted this past week while I was wondering with the boys looking for seashells, that they have the local historical chapter's newsletters on file as reference materials and I mean to go read those and make some genealogy notes.
Donna in the church I grew up in we used an unleavened bread as communion bread. Granny or Mama usually baked that.
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