Egyptian Bread and Cakes

The Egyptians grew a variety of crops, including grains, vegetables, and fruits, for consumption. However, their main focus in terms of diet revolved around essential crops, particularly barley, along with significant grains like einkorn wheat and emmer wheat, primarily used for making bread.

It is suggested that the Egyptians learned the art of baking from the Babylonians. In their bread-making process, the Ancient Egyptians incorporated yeast, a skill initially developed for brewing beer. They maintained reserves of sourdough, a basic mixture of beneficial fermentation organisms, using portions of it to inoculate fresh doughs.

After harvesting the grain, ancient Egyptians used grinding stones to transform it into flour. This coarse flour was mixed with water and kneaded to create bread dough.

Egyptian cooks sometimes prepared bread in large bowls on the ground, where they would physically knead the dough with their feet. The shaped dough was then either formed into loaves or placed into cone-shaped molds and baked over an open fire.

The Egyptians were innovators in the development of ovens. The earliest examples were cylindrical vessels made from baked Nile clay, featuring a tapered top to create a cone shape and an internal horizontal shelf-like partition.

Due to their fondness for sweet flavors, ancient Egyptians used flour to make cakes. With the absence of sugar, they turned to honey, dates, and fruit juice as sweeteners. The initial cakes likely originated in ancient Egypt, with yeast contributing to their light and fluffy texture. Honey served as both a sweetener and a topping, while nuts and spices were added for extra flavor. In some cases, cakes were decorated with honey or syrup icing.
Egyptian Bread and Cakes

History of baking powder

The first references to soda date back to the ancient Egyptians in 64 BC. The Egyptians were the first people known to use a rudimentary version of baking soda, called Natron.

In 1791, Nicholas Leblanc, French chemist and surgeon, discovered how to produce baking soda or sodium bicarbonate from common salt.

Bicarbonate of soda began to be used as a raising agent form the early 19th century and baking powder after that. The first use of baking powder began in about the 1830s.

In 1846 two bakers, John Dwight and Austin Church, established the first factory to develop baking soda.

Baking soda plus acid (initially cream of tartar) and starch resulted in baking powder. The first modern version of baking powder was discovered and manufactured by 1843 by Alfred Bird, a British chemist so he could make yeast free bread for his wife, Elizabeth, who had allergies to eggs and yeast.

It was further improved and formulated by Eben Horsford, who patented it as baking powder, the first calcium phosphate baking powder.

After the Civil War, American cooks started to use baking powder and other newly arriving and increasingly affordable ingredients.

In 1873, Marion Harland who wrote cookbooks Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery was one the first to include recipes for the kind of chemically leavened white cake and yellow cake commonly found at birthday parties.

Harland early on praised and promoted Royal Baking Powder. August Oetker, a German pharmacist made baking powder very popular when he began selling his mixture to housewife.

The recipe he created in 1891 is still sold in Germany as Baking. He stated the mass production of baking powder in 1898 and patented his technique in 1903.

The race of baking powder and baking soda companies to promote their brands, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, resulted in a few slanderous advertisements that depicted some products as ‘poison like’.

In 1889, Calumet Baking Powder was marketed as the first double-acting baking powder whose leavening began in the bowl and repeated in the hot oven.
History of baking powder 

History of Bread Baking

History of Bread Baking
Bread has been an important staple since Stone Age Farmers created the first flat bread.

A rough porridge was mixed together and spread thinly over hot stones to form soft pancake-like bread.

It is truly amazing feat that the connection was made between wheat, water and sunshine to give us this most enduring of foods.

The next step forward was achieved 5,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, when it was discovered that inverting a pot over hot stones forms a primitive but effective oven.

But the honor of mastering the art of yeast fermentation goes to the ancient Egyptians, who observed that of dough was left out in the open for a few hours it would often bubble and smell a little sour.

If the sour dough was baked, the resulting bread had a lighter texture and a pleasant yeasty flavour.

The down side to this discovery was that it relied on airborne yeast particles, which made it completely unreliable.

To overcome this, the Egyptians would simply save a piece of fermented dough from a previous successful batch and mix it into the new dough.

Bread has always played rather a telling role in Europe’s social history – the bread in the hands would always reveal the rank.

Made from refined flour, white bread was regarded as infinitely superior and therefore only suitable for the upper classes.

These days, or course, the reverse is true.

Dense, wholegrain breads are now thought to be healthy, more nourishing option and priced accordingly.

It is indeed ironic that people will pay a comparatively large sum of money for something that was once considered the bread of paupers.
History of Bread Baking