Victoria Bread Information center

Bread has played an essential role in Middle Eastern and European civilizations since ancient times, both as a foodstuff and the symbol.

Bread is a highly nutritious food eaten in one form or another by nearly every person on earth. An excellent source of vitamins, protein, and carbohydrates, bread has been an essential element of human diets for centuries in all regions but rice-growing Southeast Asia.

ALL ABOUT BREAD
The simplest breads are made from FLOUR of grains-such as wheat, oats, barley, rye, millet, and corn-mixed with milk or water. These ingredients are mixed into dough, shaped, and cooked, usually by baking. Salt, eggs, sugar, and other ingredients may be added to give the bread flavor, change its texture, or increase its nutritional value. A special ingredient called a leavening agent is often added to make the bread rise by enlarging air pockets in the dough, giving it a lighter texture and more volume.

Breads that do not contain a leavening agent are called unleavened breads. The simplest unleavened breads, including matzoh, a bread traditionally eaten during the Jewish Passover holiday, and tortillas, Latin American-style pancakes made from wheat or corn, are made from only flour and water. During baking, heat converts the water in the bread dough to steam, which creates tiny bubbles that cause the bread to rise.

Most leavened breads are made with YEAST, a microscopic organism that feeds on carbohydrates in flour, converting them into alcohol and carbon dioxide in a process called fermentation. Breads made with yeast must be allowed time to rise before baking. Bakers set the dough aside in a warm, moist environment; this enables the yeast to multiply, producing more carbon dioxide gas during fermentation.

Breads made with chemical leavening agents instead of yeast, such as BAKING POWDER or baking soda, are called quick breads because they can be mixed together and baked without first letting the dough rise. Instead of yeast metabolism, quick breads rely on chemical reactions between ingredients that produce carbon dioxide. For example, baking soda, also known as sodium bicarbonate, is a harmless, tasteless leavening agent that reacts with acidic ingredients, such as lactic acids in milk, causing quick breads to rise.

In addition to different flours, other ingredients may be added to bread to impart different flavors and textures. Eggs, milk, sugar, and fats and oils, also called shortening, can be added to bread dough to create a tender, richer bread with a finer consistency . Most breads incorporate one or more of these ingredients. Raisins, almonds, sesame seeds, and poppy seeds boost protein content as well as enhance flavor and are popular additions to bread. Herbs and spices, such as cumin or cinnamon, add a variety of subtle flavors.

HOW BREAD IS MADE
Making yeast breads involves five basic steps: mixing, kneading, and rising the dough, then shaping and baking the bread.

Flour is mixed with yeast, liquid ingredients (usually milk or water) and any additional ingredients such as salt, sugar, and shortening to form dough. After the dough becomes too thick to stir, it is kneaded by repeatedly pressing, folding, and turning it to develop and stretch the gluten, which helps the bread rise.

The kneaded dough is allowed to ferment until it rises to double its original size. It is then punched down and kneaded again briefly to break up large air pockets into smaller ones and to remix the dough slightly, enabling the yeast to come into contact with any pockets of unmetabolized sugars, and then allowed to rise again. Different types of bread dough may be allowed to rise several times, contributing to the texture and volume of the bread. Before the final rising, the dough is shaped into one of many traditional shapes, for example a loaf or a roll. After the final rising, the bread is baked.

NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION
As the nutritional table shows, the protein, carbohydrate, fat and calorie content of the different varieties of bread is relatively similar. On the other hand the vitamin, minerals, and fiber content varies significantly from one type of bread to another.

WHITE BREAD
(enriched) is a good source of thiamine, niacin, iron, and folic acid; it also contains riboflavin, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, and pantothenic acid.

WHOLE WHEAT BREAD
contains folic acid, phosphorus, thiamine, iron, potassium, and niacin.

DARK RYE BREAD
contains potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron, thiamine, copper, and zinc.

Although people have been making bread for thousands of years, its exact origins are unknown.

During the late Stone Age, nomadic tribes probably made a thick gruel from wild grain and baked it into flat cakes on hot stones in their campfires. About 10,000 years ago nomadic tribes settled and began cultivating grains, among them einkorn and emmer, the ancestors of modern domestic wheat. Around 6000 BC Swiss lake dwellers improved on the wild grain-gruel recipe by crushing grains to make a flatbread. Archaeological evidence suggests that yeast-risen wheat breads were developed in Egypt around 4000 years ago. The Egyptians are also believed to be the first to grind wheat flour in a process analogous to modern milling.

Technical advances continued to improve bread-making techniques, among them the use of the yeast-containing residue of the brewing process as a leavening agent. Bread bakers no longer had to rely on wild airborne yeast or sourdough starters, and by the 3rd century BC, yeast was manufactured commercially in Egypt. Greeks who colonized the Mediterranean between about 700 and 130 BC were avid bakers. They refined flours to eliminate the impurities; seasoned their breads and cakes with honey, sesame, and fruits; and invented a stone oven for baking bread. By the 2nd century AD Roman bakeries produced several different kinds of bread, and the Romans introduced their bread to all the lands they conquered.

During the early half of the Middle Ages, around the 5th century to the 10th century, political conditions caused trade between countries to decline. Wheat crops, grown in warm, dry climates, became less available to bakers in the cool, damp countries of northern Europe. Northern bakers perfected rye, oat, and barley breads, and a tradition of dark, hearty bread making persists in some regions of northern Europe today.

Colonial Americans made bread from cornmeal at home, baking it in the fireplace hearth. Wheat for bread became available as American settlers migrated westward to the plains-regions with climates suitable for wheat farming-and established cooperative mills for grinding grain. Railroads made grain and flour distribution efficient and cost-effective. Bread makers had to make their own yeast or rely on old dough starters for leavening until 1868, when prepared packaged yeast was made available for sale to the public.

In the 20th century, industrial and technological improvements made the time-consuming flour-refining process less expensive. White flour, once considered a delicacy for the upper classes, replaced whole wheat flour as the cheapest, most widely produced flour. Until the early 20th century, white flour was not fortified with the vitamins and minerals lost during the refining process, and conditions caused by vitamin deficiencies became more prevalent as white bread replaced whole wheat bread in popularity. Cases of beriberi, a condition resulting from a lack of thiamine, and pellagra, caused by dietary niacin deficiencies, increased dramatically. Many governments, including the United States, began enforcing mandatory vitamin and mineral fortification requirements. These programs have been quite successful, and cases of beriberi and pellagra are now very rare in industrialized countries.