How it Started

Wheat has been cultivated by man since before recorded history. It is conjectured by anthropologists that hungry hunter/gatherers first stockpiled the grain as a storable food source. When it got wet, it sprouted, and people found that if the grain was planted it yielded yet more seeds.

Grown in Mesopotamia and Egypt, wheat was likely first merely chewed. Later it was discovered that it could be pulverized and made into a paste. Set over a fire, the paste hardened into a flat bread that kept for several days. It did not take much of a leap to discover leavened (raised) bread when yeast was accidentally introduced to the paste.