from just earth, air, fire, and water.
spur them on to labour. Hunger will tame the fiercest animal, it will teach decency and civility, obedience and subjection, to the most brutish, the most obsti- nate, and the most perverse.”). There were periodic failures of the wheat crop, or harvests too small to guarantee enough bread for all. Lack of bread led directly to civil unrest and rioting, as it has even to this day in parts of the world where bread remains a primary food source.
In the 1770s, after periodic grain shortages that had afflicted the nation for some decades, the French investigated ways of combining other grains and vegetables with wheat in order to make palat- able and nutritious bread during times of wheat shortages or famine. Similarly, the English looked into alternative grains as a way of ensuring sufficient bread for the masses. The Annals of Agriculture, pub- lished in London in 1796, gave a detailed account of experiments in making seventy different breads using various ingredients: “The following were the spe- cies pitched upon, viz. Wheat, rye, rice, barley, buck wheat, maize, oats, pease, beans, and also potatoes.” The results appear to have been mixed. On the one hand, it was opined that “at first a change may prove disagreeable, yet the practice of a few days will soon reconcile the stomach to almost any species of food.” Yet in spite of this hopeful pronouncement, not everyone enjoyed these hybrids: “In Nottinghamshire, opulent farmers consume one-third wheat, one-third rye, and one-third barley; but their labourers do not relish it, and have lost their rye teeth [taste for rye].”
The preeminence of wheat as a foodstuff is cen- turies old. Archeological evidence provides us with a fascinating insight into the origins of wheat cultiva- tion. More than eighteen thousand years ago, in the area from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, in what is now Iraq and Syria, wild grains such as emmer and einkorn (“one seed”) were being harvested by humans. By chewing the grains, soaking and pounding them, or parching or simmering them, people received life-sustaining nourishment. Gradually, it was discovered that by intentionally planting some of the seeds, a crop could be cultivated. This led to the establishment of settled cultures, as people changed from a hunting-and- gathering lifestyle to one of cereal farming, and later, In an endeavor such as bread baking, where a
comparatively small number of ingredients are used, a change in one can have a significant impact on the results. For example, if a baker decides to increase the percentage of rye flour in a formula for naturally leav- ened bread from 10 to 20 percent, not only will the final taste of the bread be altered, but the dough’s rate of fermentation as well as its final volume will also be impacted by the increase. It is not so much a matter of one formula being “better” than another; rather, changes in ingredients produce changes in all aspects of the dough’s development, and therefore a thorough understanding of the function and effect of the major bread ingredients will be a large benefit to achieving consistent production results, whether for a few loaves baked in a kitchen oven, or a few hundred baked in a big hearth oven. In this chapter, we will first look at the Big Four—flour, water, salt, and yeast—and then at some of the other ingredi- ents used in bread baking.
flour
The topic of flour is enormous. Hundreds of pages could be devoted to a discussion of it, and once writ- ten, hundreds more could be added. Civilizations have risen around wheat-growing regions; govern- ments have fallen when their ability to guarantee the availability of bread faltered; individuals have made fortunes from manipulations of the grain trade; social injustice stemming from the grain trade has kept thousands of people impoverished. For centuries, in many parts of the world it was bread alone that pro- vided people with the strength to live and to labor. During difficult times, for example in England at the end of the eighteenth century, it took more than 100 percent of the breadwinner’s salary simply to purchase the family’s bread (baker and anthropolo- gist Jules Rabin of Vermont told me in conversation that bread functioned during that era as oil does in our own times, that is, as the fuel that did the work for society; bread was the literal fuel, and humans the machines). Hunger, that is to say, the lack of bread, was used as a tool to control the workforce (as the English Reverend Joseph Townsend wrote in 1786, speaking of the poor: “It is only hunger which can
four that are of primary interest to the bread baker (the soft wheats have a lower proportion of protein and a higher proportion of starch than the hard wheats, and are more applicable to the production of pastries and other baked goods that don’t require a highly developed gluten structure). For our discus- sion, we will focus on the first four classes of wheat.
Winter wheat (both red and white) is grown in areas of comparatively gentle winters. Northern Texas, eastern Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas are the primary winter-wheat-growing regions in the United States, with Kansas being the nation’s high- est producer. The grain is sown in September and October; it sprouts and grows four or five inches before winter arrives. It spends the winter in a dor- mant phase, hopefully protected by a covering of snow. In spring, it resumes its growth, and harvest of the wheat begins in May, continuing until early to mid-July.
Hard red spring wheat has a different growing cul- ture. In North America, it is sown in areas with fierce winters, such as the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The seed is planted in spring, goes through its entire growth cycle during spring and summer, and is harvested in mid- to late summer.
animal husbandry. These early civilizations learned that by planting the seeds that were the largest, or most resistant to insect infestation, or those that held firmly to the plant during rain or wind, they could improve the quality of the grain they harvested. Since those ancient days, what was originally a primitive pursuit has become today a complex science, and yet the goal has remained the same: to manipulate grains in order to have a measure of control over their char- acteristics. (Looming ominously on the near horizon is the possible commercial introduction of genetically modifed wheat in the United States.)