Baking Historical Background (week 1)

Grains have been the most important staple food in the human diet since

prehistoric times, so it is only a slight exaggeration to say that baking is almost

as old as the human race.

Because of the lack of cooking utensils, it is probable that one of the earliest

grain preparations was made by toasting dry grains, pounding them to a meal

with rocks, and mixing the meal to a paste with water. Later it was discovered

that some of this paste, if laid on a hot stone next to a fire, turned into a

flatbread that was a little more appetizing than the plain paste. Unleavened

flatbreads, such as tortillas, are still important foods in many cultures.

A grain paste left to stand for a time sooner or later collects wild yeasts and

begins to ferment. This was, no doubt, the beginning of leavened bread,

although for most of human history the presence of yeast was mostly

accidental.Eventually,people learned they could save a small part of the dough

to leaven the next day’s batch. Not until relatively recent times, however, did

bakers learn to control yeast with any accuracy.

By the time of the ancient Greeks, about five or six hundred years BCE,

enclosed ovens, heated by wood fires, were in use. People took turns baking

their breads in a large communal oven, unless they were wealthy enough to

have their own oven.

Several centuries later, ancient Rome saw the first mass production of

breads, so the baking profession can be said to have started at that time.Many of

the products made by the professional bakers contained quantities of honey and

oil, so these foods might be called pastries rather than breads.That the primary
fat available was oil placed a limit on the kinds of pastries that could be made.

Only a solid fat such as butter enables the pastry maker to produce the kinds of

stiff doughs we are familiar with, such as pie doughs and short pastries.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, baking as a profession almost

disappeared. Not until the latter part of the Middle Ages did baking and pastry

making begin to reappear as important professions in the service of the

nobility. Bread baking continued to be performed by professional bakers, not

homemakers, because it required ovens that needed almost constant tending.

In much of Europe, tending ovens and making bread dough were separate

operations. The oven tender maintained the oven, heated it properly, and

supervised the baking of the loaves that were brought to him. In early years,

the oven may not have been near the workshops of the bakers, and one oven

served the needs of several bakers. It is interesting to note that in many

bakeries today, especially in the larger ones, this division of labor still exists.

The chef who tends the ovens bakes the proofed breads and other products

that are brought to him or her and may not have any part in the mixing and

makeup of these products.

It was also in the Middle Ages that bakers and pastry chefs in France

formed guilds in order to protect and further their art. Regulations prohibited

all but certified bakers from baking bread for sale, and the guilds had enough

power to limit certification to their own members.The guilds, as well as the

apprenticeship system, which was well developed by the sixteenth century,

also provided a way to pass the knowledge of the baker’s trade from

generation to generation.

Bakers also made cakes from doughs or batters containing honey or other
sweet ingredients, such as dried fruits. Many of these items had religious

significance and were baked only for special occasions, such as the Twelfth

Night cakes baked after Christmas. Such products nearly always had a dense

texture, unlike the light confections we call cakes today.Nonsweetened pastry

doughs were also made for such products as meat pies. In the 1400s, pastry chefs in France formed their
own corporations and took pastry making away

from bakers. From this point on, the profession of pastry making developed

rapidly, and cooks developed many new kinds of pastry products.

The European discovery of the Americas in 1492 sparked a revolution in

pastry making.Sugar and cocoa,brought from the new world,were available in

the old world for the first time. Before, the only significant sweetener was

honey. Once the new ingredients became widely available, baking and pastry

became more and more sophisticated, with many new recipes being

developed. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many of the basic

pastries that we know today, including laminated or layered doughs like puff

pastry and Danish dough,were being made.

The nineteenth century saw the development of modern baking as we

know it. After the French Revolution in 1789, many bakers and pastry cooks

who had been servants in the houses of the nobility started independent

businesses. Artisans competed for customers with the quality of their

products. The general public—not just aristocrats and the well-to-do—were

able to buy fine pastries. Some of the pastry shops started during that time still

serve Parisians today.

The most famous chef of the early nineteenth century was Marie-Antoine

Carême, also known as Antonin Carême, who lived from 1784 to 1833. His

spectacular constructions of sugar and pastry earned him great fame, and he
elevated the jobs of cook and pastry chef to respected professions.Carême’s book,

Le Pâtissier Royal,was one of the first systematic explanations of the pastry chef’s

art.

Ironically, most of Carême’s career was spent in the service of the nobility

and royalty, in an era when the products of the bakers’ and pastry chefs’ craft

were becoming more widely available to average citizens. Carême had little to

do with the commercial and retail aspects of baking.

The nineteenth century was also a time of great technical progress.

Automated processes enabled bakers to do many tasks with machines that

once required a great deal of manual labor. The most important of these

technological advances was the development of roller milling. Prior to this

time, flour was milled by grinding grain between two stones. The resulting

flour then had to be sifted, or bolted, often numerous times, to separate the

bran. The process was slow. Roller milling, described in chapter 3 (see page

31), is much faster and more efficient. This was a tremendous boost to the

baking industry.

Another important development of the period was the new availability of

flours from the wheat-growing regions of North America. These wheat

varieties were higher in protein than those that could be grown in northern

Europe, and the export of this wheat to Europe promoted the large-scale

production of white bread.

In the twentieth century, advances in technology, from refrigeration to

sophisticated ovens to air transportation that carries fresh ingredients around

the world, contributed immeasurably to baking and pastry making. At the

beginning of the twenty-first century,the popularity of fine breads and pastries

many of the technological advances in bread baking have sparked a reaction

among bakers and consumers alike, who are looking to reclaim some of the

flavors of old-fashioned breads that were lost as baking became more

industrialized and baked goods became more refined, standardized, and—

some would say—flavorless.Bakers are researching methods for producing the

handmade sourdough breads of times past, and they are experimenting with

specialty flours in their search for flavor.

Those entering a career in baking or pastry making today find opportunities

in three areas: restaurants and hotels, retail bakeries and pastry shops,

and large-scale bakeries and industrial production of baked goods