THE HISTORY OF BREAD.

Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 28 August 1912, Page 7

THE HISTORY OF BREAD.

Bread in ancient times consisted in mixing the flour with water and flattening the paste so formed into cakes, these being placed on the hearth and covered with hot ashes. It was a cake of this description that Sarah made for Abraham. By-and-bye by dint of accident and experiment the

power of leaven or sour dough as a raising agent was discovered. The story is as follows: One day the slave of ah archon of Athens carelessly left some wheaten dough in an earthen pan and forgot all about it. Some days afterwards, when bread-making again, he discovered it, and found it had turned sour. He was about to throw it away, but his master just then arrived on the scene, and to hide his mistake he adroitly mixed the sour dough with the fresh.

The bread when baked was quite different from what anyone had ever tasted, as it had risen and was light owing to the introduction of leaven, or dough in which alcoholic fermentation had begun. So delicious did it seem to the archon and his friends that the slave was summoned and made to tell his. secret. The fame of leaven as a raising- agent spread all over Athens- Very soon the demand for leavening bread became so great that men set up as bakers, and in a short time bread-making- became an art. Even now one hears occasionally of leaven being used as a raising agent.

As a result also of accident yeast many years after was discovered, and nothing- has replaced it even up to the

present time,