J.A. Bolton’s favorite bread.
During this Thanksgiving season, I’m sure besides the turkey, there will be breaded dressing and probably other types of bread on the table.
Humans have been baking bread for over ten thousand years. Most humans gave up their nomadic way of life, settled down, and began farming. Over the years they took many wild grains and transformed them into a domestic crop.
After the grain was harvested, it had to be smashed or ground to remove the inedible outer husk. Then it could be made into an eatable food.
The first bread was probably served in the old countries of the Middle East as a flatbread. In other words, it didn’t have any yeast or leavening in it to cause it to rise.
Back then, people may have cooked their bread on a hot rock and in other ways as time went on. In Jesus’s day, there were two types of ovens to bake your bread: the jar-oven and the pit-oven. What in the world was a jar-oven? Seems they used a large pottery container, which had a narrow opening toward the top, then fuel was burned on the inside to heat the dough that was hand-pressed against the outside to bake. Any of you ladies complaining about cleaning a conventional oven might just want to put a jar-oven on your Christmas list!
Although many different types of grains are used to make bread, only wheat can be sifted into a pure white starch to produce white bread.
Another question might arise (pun intended), and that is, which came first the bread or the beer? Well, this might be like the old saying, which came first the chicken or the egg? Seems some of the same procedures were used to make both the bread and the beer. Some historians maintain that man settled down and started agriculture just because he wanted to turn his grain into beer. Ya’ll ponder on that one a while!!!
So what does bread symbolize? A good way to put it is that bread is a gift from God. The Holy Bible says that during Moses’s time, God sent down manna from heaven to feed His starving people in the desert. Later, Jesus feed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish. At the Last Supper, Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and said, “This is my body broken for you, take and eat.” Bread became a sign of sharing, and more importantly, symbolized the word of God.
Bread is not only a symbol but a bond – a value that should definitely unite the people of this world.
In the middle ages, the upper class ate the more refined white bread while all others ate the darker or whole wheat bread. Today we are told that whole wheat is so much better for our health than white bread.
For hundreds of years, bread was sold in whole loaves and cut or broken at home. In 1917, a jeweler by the name of Otto Rohuedder came up with a mechanical bread slicer. His invention didn’t catch on because companies thought the average housewife preferred their bread in whole loaves. Finally, in 1928, sliced bread was a household word and it caught on like wildfire. Everyone that could afford it thought, “why hasn’t this been done before?” I can even remember my dad, who was raised on a rural farm in northern Richmond County, telling about how he went to school and traded his homemade ham or sausage biscuit for a sliced lite bread baloney sandwich. I think he got the bad end of that deal, don’t you?!?
There are literally hundreds of types of bread made all over the world seems each culture prefers its own form. As for me, give me a hoecake of cornbread, a pan of homemade biscuits, and last, a slice or two of lite bread, in that order.
Lastly, is all this delicious bread good for you? Bread seems to be high in carbs, low in micronutrients, and the gluten and antinutrients content cause some folks to have health issues.
Today, dietitians tell us that whole-grain bread gives us better health benefits, but I personally believe that moderation is the key for anything.
So, go ahead this Thanksgiving and eat that breaded turkey dressing and one or two biscuits. Why, they might not come around again ‘til Christmas!
I certainly hope you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving and ya’’ll keep safe out there, ya hear?!?
J.A. Bolton is author of “Just Passing Time,” co-author of “Just Passing Time Together,” and just released his new book “Southern Fried: Down-Home Stories,” all of which can be purchased on Amazon. Contact him at [email protected]
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The breaking of bread - Richmond County Daily Journal
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