A trail of ancient bread crumbs has put the origins of bread making in the Stone Age. The bake would have looked like a flatbread and tasted a bit like today's multi-grain varieties.
The fireplace where the bread was found at an archaeological site known as Shubayqa 1
Our ancestors may have used the bread as a wrap for roasted meat. Thus, as well as being the oldest bread, it may also have been the oldest sandwich.
At an estimated age of 14,400 years, these bread remains are the oldest bakery products ever found, bread found its way into our ancestors’ diet even before the start of agriculture as a way of life over 10,000 years ago.
The possibility that growing cereals for bread may have been the driving force behind farming.
The stone age bread-makers took flour made from wild wheat and barley, mixed it with the pulverized roots of plants, added water, and then baked it.
The bread would have been made in several stages, "grinding cereals and club-rush tubers to obtain fine flour, mixing of flour with water to produce dough, and baking the dough in the hot ashes of a fireplace or a hot flat-stone. The addition of wild tuber flour gave a slightly nutty, bitter flavor to it.
Bread has long been part of our staple diet. But little is known about the origins of bread-making. The bread was unleavened and would have resembled a wrap, pitta bread, or chapatti.
Flatbread, generally known as pita bread, is still the bread type most often consumed in the eastern Mediterranean region, including Greece. However, the principles for baking today’s flatbread are only remotely similar to the bread of ancient times
Flour Production Dated to 32,000 Years Ago, grinding tool dated to more than 32,000 years ago was used to grind grains into flour. Early humans ate ground flour 20,000 years before the start of agriculture. Flour residues recovered from 30,000-year-old grinding stones found in Italy, Russia, and the Czech Republic point to widespread processing and consumption of plant grain.
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