Bread

Bread is a food made by mixing flour with water and baking the dough. People have been making and eating bread for thousands of years, on almost every continent. It is one of the most common foods in the world. In some countries, people eat bread at every meal.

The flour in bread usually comes from a grain like wheat, rye, corn, or barley. The grain is ground up into a fine powder. Then a baker mixes the flour with water to make dough. Most bread also has salt for flavor, and many kinds have a tiny living thing called yeast added too. Yeast is a type of fungus. As the yeast eats the sugars in the dough, it gives off a gas called carbon dioxide. The gas gets trapped in tiny bubbles, and the dough puffs up. This is why a slice of bread has small holes inside.

Bread without yeast is called flatbread. Tortillas, pita, naan, and matzo are all flatbreads. They have been made for a very long time, because you do not need to wait for the dough to rise. Bread that uses yeast and rises tall, like a loaf of sandwich bread, is called leavened bread.

The first bread was probably made by accident. About 14,500 years ago, hunter-gatherers in what is now Jordan ground up wild grains, mixed them with water, and cooked the paste on hot stones. That is older than farming itself. Once people started growing wheat and barley about 10,000 years ago, bread became a daily food. Ancient Egyptians were famous bread bakers. Workers who built the pyramids were sometimes paid in loaves.

Different parts of the world grew different grains, so they made different breads. In Mexico and Central America, people grew corn and made tortillas. In India, people made naan and chapati from wheat. In Ethiopia, a sour, spongy flatbread called injera is made from a tiny grain called teff. In France, the long thin baguette became a national symbol. In Italy, pizza started as a flatbread with toppings.

Bread is more than just food. In many cultures, it stands for life itself. People share bread at weddings, holidays, and religious meals. Christians use bread in a service called communion. Jews eat a braided bread called challah on Friday nights. The English word "lord" once meant "loaf-keeper," and "lady" meant "loaf-kneader." Few foods have shaped human history as much as bread.