After spending countless hours reading about how humans *might* have figured out how to make tasty bread, I could no longer contain myself and made some bread of my own. The top picture is a loaf of beer bread whose main ingredients are flour and beer. Beer bread represents what the first risen loaves probably looked like, most likely brought about by an ancient beer enthusiast (or clean-water-poor peasant) making his typical water and flour flat loaf with beer instead and discovering that the loaf rose (due to the living fermenting cultures that at one point fermented the beer, who emit CO2 which ultimately makes the bread rise, but he of course did not know that, his explanation was probably MAGIC). The bottom picture is of two loaves of challah that I made because challah is tasty. This purposefully yeasty bread was a much later development, as it took people a while to realize that yeast was an easy to keep, portable additive that would make bread rise--it also allowed them to keep their beer to drink rather than pouring it into their daily bread. Yay food history and tasty bread!
