Bread is the most widely eaten food. It provides a larger share of people’s energy and protein than any other food and is often called the staff of life.
Bread is made by baking dough that consists chiefly of flour or grain meal mixed with water or milk. The people of many Western countries eat bread baked mainly as loaves or rolls made with wheat flour. In some other parts of the world, people eat thin, crisp sheets of bread called flat bread. Flat bread is made either from such grains as barley, corn, oats, rice, rye, and wheat, or from flour milled from these grains.
In many parts of the world, people make bread by hand much as ancient bakers did. In the United States and many other industrial nations, however, most bread is made by machine in commercial bakeries.
Kinds of bread.
Bread may be divided into three main types: (1) yeast bread, (2) quick bread, and (3) flat bread. Yeast bread is raised (puffed up) by yeast. Quick bread requires less preparation time before baking than yeast bread. It is raised by the use of baking powder or some other leaven, a substance that raises dough. Flat bread contains little or no leaven. It takes about as long to prepare before baking as quick bread.
Yeast bread
includes pan bread, hearth bread, and other yeast-leavened goods. Pan bread, which is baked in a container, includes bread made with white wheat flour and such specialty breads as raisin bread and whole-wheat bread. Hearth bread, which includes French bread and most rye bread, is baked on a flat pan or placed directly on the hearth (floor) of an oven. Other yeast-leavened goods include hamburger and frankfurter rolls and brown-and-serve (partially baked) rolls.
Quick bread
includes corn bread, doughnuts, muffins, and pancakes. Most quick bread is baked at home or in local bakeries and supermarkets.
Flat bread
is a major food in many parts of the world. Central Americans eat various flat breads made from corn or wheat flour, called tortillas. People in the Far East make several types of flat bread from rice flour. The people of India eat a flat bread called chapatti, which includes coarsely ground wheat. In the Middle East, a flat bread called pita bread is made from durum wheat.
How yeast bread is made.
Both commercial bakers and home bakers make bread from a dough that consists of at least four ingredients–flour, water or milk, salt, and yeast. The dough may also contain eggs, shortening, sugar, or other foods.
Most commercial bakers in the United States and many other countries use enriched dough for white bread. They enrich their dough by adding vitamins and minerals, or they use already enriched flour. Most commercial dough also contains substances called dough conditioners and shelf-life improvers. Dough conditioners, such as chlorine dioxide and potassium bromate, help give bread a smooth, even texture. Shelf-life improvers include monoglycerides, which help keep bread from becoming stale, and calcium propionate, which reduces the growth of mold and bacteria.
Dough is made into bread by one of two processes, conventional bread making or continuous bread making. Conventional bread making is used by most bakeries. Home bakers also use variations of conventional bread making. Continuous bread making is used by only the largest bakeries.
In conventional bread making, the ingredients are mixed by one of two chief methods, the sponge-and-dough method or the straight dough method. In the sponge-and-dough method, the ingredients are combined in two stages. The first stage mixes all the yeast and about two-thirds of the flour and water or milk. This mixture is called a sponge. Bakers let the sponge ferment (rise) at about 85 °F (29 °C) for up to 16 hours. Then they add the rest of the ingredients, and the mixture ferments again for a short time. In the straight dough method, all the ingredients are combined at once and fermented for about 3 hours at 85 °F (29 °C).
After either of these fermenting processes, the dough is divided into pieces and shaped. It is then fermented again for a short time in a process called proofing and baked in an oven at about 450 °F (232 °C).
Continuous bread making uses highly specialized equipment to mix the ingredients and prepare the dough for baking. In the most common method, all the ingredients except the flour are first combined to form a mixture called a broth. After fermenting in a tank, the broth is pumped to a mixer and the flour is added. In the mixer, the ingredients are combined under pressure to form dough. The dough is then divided, shaped, and sent to an oven for baking. This process produces bread of uniform shape, texture, and quality.
After bread has been baked, it is removed from the oven to cool. In commercial bakeries, the loaves are placed in cooling machines where their temperature is reduced to about 100 °F (38 °C). The bread may then be sliced and wrapped in paper or plastic film.
The food value of bread.
Enriched white bread provides important amounts of protein, starch, iron, and three B vitamins–niacin, riboflavin, and thiamine. Milling removes from wheat most of these substances, which are naturally present in the grain.
Whole-wheat bread provides almost all the natural vitamins and minerals of wheat, including niacin, riboflavin, thiamine, vitamin E, and iron and calcium. Whole-wheat bread also contains bran, an important source of fiber. White bread has little fiber.
History.
Prehistoric people made flat bread by mixing grain meal with water and baking the resulting dough on rocks that they had heated. Historians believe the Egyptians learned to make yeast bread about 2600 B.C. The ancient Greeks learned bread making from the Egyptians and later taught the method to the Romans. By the A.D. 100’s, the Romans had taught the technique to people in many parts of Europe. In the Middle Ages, most European cities had bakeries.
For hundreds of years, most people ate whole-wheat bread or other kinds of whole-grain bread. White wheat flour was extremely expensive because milling it required hours of hand labor. During the late 1800’s, millers developed machinery that milled white flour inexpensively. By 1900, white bread was a common food.
Commercial bakeries were established in the American Colonies as early as 1640. But until the 1900’s, most bread was baked at home. Both homemade and commercial bread were made by hand. During the 1920’s, many United States bakeries became mechanized.
In the 1930’s, U.S. public health officials reported a large number of cases of beriberi and pellagra. These diseases are caused by a lack of B vitamins. In 1941, many U.S. bakeries agreed to begin enriching white bread with B vitamins and iron to fight the diseases. Almost all the nation’s bakeries have sold enriched white bread since the mid-1950’s, and beriberi and pellagra are now rare in the United States.
