Baking, or the art of making bread, is amongst the earliest modes resorted to by the more advanced portions of mankind for the preparation of food. In the early ages, however, loaf or leavened bread was unknown, as it is amongst uncivilized nations to this day. The North American Indians contrive, by pounding their maize, or Indian corn, to make a sort of cake, which they bake by means of hot cinders. This serves them, and, indeed, occasionally the Anglo-Americans, as a substitute for loaf or leavened bread, and may be called unleavened bread. But in some parts of the world bread is not known; in others it may be known, but is not used - as amongst the people inhabiting the vast Pampas on the Rio de la Plata, where scarcely anything is eaten but beef.

Bread may be thus defined; - A nutritive substance made of corn, generally wheat, or other farinaceous or mealy vegetables, ground or reduced into flour or meal, that is, a powder more or less fine, and kneaded or mixed with water, and baked in an oven, upon hot ashes or other grise. This process makes unleavened bread, or, in other words, unfermented bread, or what is now called biscuits. To leavened or fermented bread, that is, the bread generally used in our houses, there must be an addition, yeast, or some other substance which has the property of promoting fermentation.

The origin or etymology of the word bread is not without interest. Home Tooke says, bread is brayed, grain, from the verb to bray or pound in a mortar, the ancient way in which flour was made. The meaning of bread, therefore, is something brayed - brayed wheat, or wheat bread - pease brayed, or bread - oats brayed, or bread, etc. The word bread was spelt differently in different ages; thus we have brede, breed, etc. Dough, Home Tooke says, comes from the Anglo-Saxon word deaw-ian, to wet, to moisten. Dough, or duw, means wetted. The bread, that is, brayed corn or grain, by being wetted becomes dough.

Loaf comes from the Anglo-Saxon word hlif-ian, to raise, to lift up.

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Thus, after the bread or brayed corn has been wetted, by which it becomes dough, then follows the leaven, by which it becomes loaf, that is, raised. Leaven is derived from the French word lever, to raise.

Bread, in some countries, is not made entirely of meal, much less of wheaten flour. In many parts of Sweden, the bread is composed partly of the bark of trees, particularly during winter.

In Westphalia, a kind of very coarse black bread is made, of which the peasants bake one large loaf for the whole week. This is divided for use with a saw. It is called pumpernickel, and is sometimes exported. In many parts of Germany, bread is made of grain nearly entire, or but just bruised, which is very coarse, and frequently forms part of the food of horses.

The Romans, before they had acquired the art of baking, were called, either by way of distinction or reproach, the pulse-eating people. According to some authorities, indeed, the earlier nations knew no other use of their meal than to make of it a kind of porridge. Such was the food of the Roman soldiers for several centuries, or at most their skill extended no farther than to knead unleavened dough into cakes or biscuits. Even at present, as has been before intimated, there are many countries where the luxury of bread is unknown.

Loaf-bread is seldom used in the northern parts of Europe and Asia, except by the higher classes of inhabitants. You never see loaves in Sweden, though in the towns rolls are common enough. Gottenburg is a considerable town, containing between twenty and thirty thousand inhabitants. In the year 1812 it was crowded with merchants from all parts of Europe, being at that time the great connecting link between Great Britain and the Continent. Towards the end of that year only, the captain of an English packet ordered a Gottenburg baker to bake for him a quantity of bread, amounting altogether to the value of one pound sterling. The baker was astonished, and in fact confounded, at so great an order, and refused to comply till the captain gave him security that he would carry off and pay for the loaves, declaring that he could never dispose of so great a quantity of bread in Gottenburg, if it were left on his hands. In the country parts of Sweden, nothing in the character of bread is to be met with, excepting rye cakes, which are represented as nearly as hard as flint, and which are only baked twice a year.