September 21, 2025 • 25 mins
It's a staple on almost every table, but bread is far more than just a simple food. It's a revolutionary force that has built empires, fueled rebellions, and fundamentally shaped human history.
On this episode of The Tea on Everything, we uncover the incredible story of bread. We'll explore how it became the world's very first processed food, its critical role in ancient Egypt, and how its scarcity helped trigger the French Revolution. We then bring the story to the modern day, diving into the science of the microbiome and the heated controversies around gluten. This is the history, science, and culture of a food you thought you knew.
Ready for the full story? Let's spill The Tea on Everything about bread.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-unfiltered-pivot--6743504/support.
On this episode of The Tea on Everything, we uncover the incredible story of bread. We'll explore how it became the world's very first processed food, its critical role in ancient Egypt, and how its scarcity helped trigger the French Revolution. We then bring the story to the modern day, diving into the science of the microbiome and the heated controversies around gluten. This is the history, science, and culture of a food you thought you knew.
Ready for the full story? Let's spill The Tea on Everything about bread.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-unfiltered-pivot--6743504/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the deep dive. We dig into the sources,
pull out the key insights and gets you right up
to speed. Today we're cracking open the secret life of bread.
It sounds so simple, but it's a food so foundational.
Its name is still basically shorthand for life, for money,
for you know, survival.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
It really is. You think flower water, heat, simple, right,
But when you actually look at the history bread is, well,
it's way more than just a staple food. It's genuinely
one of the first big successes in food technology, a
real disruptive innovation, you could say that completely altered how
human society developed. There's this huge history heading inside evidence
(00:38):
suggesting we were processing starches like thirty thousand years ago.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Thirty thousand years that's wow. Yeah, that's some serious history
packed into maybe the most everyday item in the kitchen.
Our sources for this dive are pretty wide ranging. We're
looking at everything from paleolithic archaeology, the dawn of civilization,
although we up to modern stuff like industrial food chemistry,
the physics of gluten, and the big modern debate. It's
about gut, health and digestion exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So our mission for you, the listener is really to
get beyond just the recipe. We want to synthesize how
this simple act mixing grain, water, maybe some air, how
that shaped entire empires, how it decided where people settled down,
and how it's still fueling these really intense modern arguments
about diet inflammation and what our bodies can or maybe
(01:24):
can't handle anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Okay, let's unpack this. Then. If we're starting thirty thousand
years ago, that's way before farming, right, we're talking Paleolithic yea,
So what exactly were people baking back then? It wasn't
a sourdough loaf presumably.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
No, definitely not your artisan sourdough.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Uh uh.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
The earliest evidence we have it actually predates the Neolithic,
the start of farming, by tens of thousands of years.
Sources point to this microscopic stuff starch residue found on
old grinding stones, rocks, you know. But in places like Europe, Australia,
and this residue it's not from cultivated grains like wheat.
It's from the roots of wild plants, things that cattails, ferns,
(02:00):
fiber stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Okay, so hunter gatherers were pounding these roots, not really
grinding like flour, but pounding them to get the starch out.
What were they trying to.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Do, Yeah, pounding or scraping. They were basically creating a
very very primitive kind of processed food. They'd get this
starch extract, mix it up with water into a paste
kind of a slurry, then spread that paste on a
hot rock, maybe over a fire, and what you get
is this dense, flat, probably pretty charred thing like a
primitive flat bread or maybe a biscuit. It was definitely
(02:28):
an intentional transformation, taking something raw and making it well
more calorie efficient.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
And the timing is really something you mentioned. The oldest
direct evidence actual charred bread bits, Yeah, found in Jordan.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
That's right, and a too fie insight data to about
fourteen thousan five hundred years ago. And that's critical because
it puts the technology, the know how of making bread
thousands of years before we generally mark the start of
the agricultural revolution, which is usually pegged around what ten
thousand BC.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
So the idea of processing starches into something cooked and
easier to eat was around long before people actually settled
down and started farming those starches exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
It proves the concept was there way before the full
commitment to agriculture, which.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Brings up the big question why even bother wild grains,
The seeds from grasses, they're tough, hard to digest, not
much yield. Why go through all that effort of grinding
or pounding, Why not just eat the seeds?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Well, raw grains are really tough customers. They have hard
outer layers, these things called enzyme inhibitors. They're just incredible, right, And.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Once they cleared that technological hurdle, society was kind of
primed for the Neilothica Revolution starting around ten thousand BC.
That's when things shifted from just preparing food to really
controlling the source.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, precisely, agriculture meant selective breeding. It wasn't accidental. Over
thousands of years, early farmers weren't just planting random seeds.
They deliberately picked the plants that gave better yields, were
easier to harvest, produced better quality grain. This human metaling
created the grains we know today, wheat, barley, rye. They're
(04:02):
heavily hybridized. They actually depend on us to cultivate them. Now,
their cultural artifacts as much as they are food.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Really, and what I find really striking in the sources
is that the big advantage farming societies had over one
hunter gatherers wasn't just like more calories overall, It was
about surviving the lean times.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
That is probably the single most critical point that's easy
to miss. Storability. Cereal grains, unlike roots, fresh stuff, even
preserve meat. They store incredibly well, keep them dry, keep
the pests away, and they can last for years. Think
about it. The biggest historical struggle was always getting through
winter or droughts. Being able to store grain gave societies
(04:41):
this amazing resilience against shortages, and that in turn dramatically
cut down child mortality rates. It gave settled farming communities
the edge they needed for huge sustained population growth.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So storing grain didn't just mean more people, It meant
stable power structures. If you can guarantee food, you can
build complet.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Societies exactly right. Central grain storage became the ultimate source
of political and economic power. Just picture the giant granaries
in ancient Egypt or Rome controlling the grain, collecting it,
protecting it, distributing it. That gave rulers absolute control, which
is why the refinement of baking, making better bread was
seen by Egyptians, Greeks, Romans is more than just good cooking.
It was a sign of civilization.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
It's amazing how much political weight a simple food could carry.
And we still see that metaphor baked into our language,
don't we.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Oh. Absolutely, bread instantly became the symbol for basic needs
for survival. That Roman critique PanAm at your senses Bread
and Circuses points out that just keeping people fed and
entertained was often enough to keep them quiet. And even
the English word lord, if you trace it back to
Anglo saxon, it comes from luffwared, which literally means bread keeper.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
The keeper of the bread is the boss, and that
says it all really about the absolute priority of food
security back then. But for Ages, this vital bread was
well dense, unleaven flatbread or just a heavy paste. The
big leap the thing that gave is light airy bread.
That seems to have been a happy accident.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Right now, we shift gears from flatbreads think pita tortilla,
to the kind of loaf that rises and the process
probably kicked off when someone forgot about some dough left
milled grain or dough sitting around unintentionally mixed with water,
maybe for too long, and it just started to ferment.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
What needs to be present for that accident to happen
just flour and water left out pretty much.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, you need yeast spores and bacteria, and they are
literally everywhere in the air, on the grain itself, on
your hands. If you leave a bowl of wet flour
paste out, these naturally occurring tiny organisms will find it,
start munching on the starches and sugars and begin producing gas,
so the bubbles.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
That's just biology happening unintentionally at first.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Precisely, The sources suggest that the earliest leaven bread using
some kind of wild fermentation might go back as far
as six thousand BC the Sumerians in Mesopotamia. This knowledge
how to make bread rise was incredibly valuable. It seems
to have passed to the Egyptians around three thousand BC,
and the Egyptians are often credited with really refining the process,
(07:10):
moving it from just an accident to intentionally adding cultures
to the dough.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Okay, but before yeast came in convenient packets, how did
these early bakers actually capture and keep that leavening agent going?
Where did the magic reliably come from?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
They were incredibly resourceful, often using byproducts for making other
fermented things like beer or wine. Plenty of the elder,
the Roman writer and naturalists, he actually wrote about this stuff.
He noticed different regions had different tricks.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
What did Plany notice? What were the main methods?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Well, he noted the most common way was basically the
sour dough method we still use. You keep back a
piece of dough, the starter from yesterday's bake, keep feeding
it flour and water, and the culture stays alive. But
he specifically pointed out differences between say, northern tribes and
people around the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Based on what they drank. I'm guessing beer versus wine.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Exactly that Plany saw the But the Galls and Iberians
who during a lot of beer use the barn that's
the foam skimmed off the top of fermenting beer to
make their bread, and he noted it made the bread
noticeably lighter, more airy, a really good predictable yeast source. Meanwhile,
in wine drinking areas, bakers might mix up a paste
(08:18):
using grape juice and flour, let that ferment and then
use that culture in their bread dough.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That's brilliant. The waste from making one staple fuels the
next staple. But let's go back to the sour dough starter.
The most common method. You called it a cob y, right.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Cob why it stands for symbiotic community of bacteria and yeast.
It's not just one thing, it's a whole little ecosystem
working together. You've got the yeast part, often strains like
sacromices or Candida. They eat the sugars from the flower
starch and they produce carbon dioxide gas CO two plus
a little bit of alcohol.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And the CO two gas gets trapped by the gluten,
makes the bubbles, the rise, the texture. We know, Yeah, okay,
but what's the other half, the backa doing in there? Ah?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
The bacteria, usually various types of lactobacilli, they're doing something
different chemically. They also eat sugars, but they produce lactic
acid and ascetic acid. It's the lactic acid mainly that
gives sour dough that characteristic tiny, slightly sour flavor. That's
what makes it taste different.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So bacteria for flavor, is that their only job? Or
is there another function?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Oh? A huge functional purpose preservation making those acids lactic
and acetic lowers the overall pH of the dough makes
it more acidic. This acidic environment makes it really hard
for common spoilage stuff like mold or bad bacteria to grow.
It even inhibits Bacillus subtilis, which causes something called rope
spoilage in industrial bread. So by lowering the pH, the
(09:43):
bacteria act as a natural preservative. That's why you can
keep a starter going pretty much forever just by feeding
it regularly. You hear about bakers today with starters that
are generations even centuries old.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Amazing. This slow, natural, complex process based on an ancient
axi is still seen as the gold standard for flavor,
structure and as we'll get to maybe even digestibility. But
you know, as civilization sped up that kind of patience,
well it became a problem for making bread on a
massive scale.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, the industrial era really changed the game for bread.
Everything became about two things, visual purity meaning super white bread,
and industrial speed.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
The sources talk about white flower becoming a huge data symbol.
Why white what was a big deal?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well, traditionally getting flour really white men a lot of sifting.
You had to remove the bran, the outer layer and
the germ, the oily part that was hard work, and
it wasted a fair bit of the grain. So white
bread was basically a signal that you were wealthy. You
could afford to throw away the darker, actually more nutritious parts.
Only rich people ate pure white bread.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
But then late eighteen hundreds new machines came along that
made this much easier, right industrial mills exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
These new steel roller mills were incredibly efficient. They could
completely strip away the germ, which has healthy fats and vitamins,
and the brand full of fiber and minerals. What was
left was this very fine, perfectly white, very shelf stable flour.
Because the oils in the germ could make flour go rancid,
removing them helped it last longer, but yet it also
(11:13):
stripped out most of the inherent nutritional value.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Sounds like a classic case of technology creating a new problem,
a nutritional deficit.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
It absolutely was. When everyone started eating this depleted white flour,
you saw outbreaks of deficiency diseases like palagra berry berry
linked to a lack of B vitamins, which led directly
to the practice. We still have fortification, where governments mandate
adding back essential nutrients, calcium, iron, d vitamins into refined flour.
So the modern white loaf basically needs fixing to put
(11:42):
back what the machines took out in the first place.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
And this technological shift happened alongside a really rapid change
where people got their bread. The sources say in America,
like ninety percent of bread was home baked in eighteen ninety,
but by nineteen thirty factories were dominant.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
The shift was stunningly fast. Convenience played a part, sure,
but there was also this big wave of well anxiety germophobia.
Almost early twentieth century there was a real public fear campaign.
Home baking started to seem unhygienic. People got suspicious of
the natural microbes, the sourdough germs. Some writers actually described
fermentation as millions of tiny worms being born and dying
(12:18):
in the dough.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Wow, turning this ancient respected process into something scary and gross.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Right, But factory bread that was marketed as pure, scientific, safe,
made by shiny machines, wrapped up tight. It was the
perfect controlled product of the modern age, no messy, slow
human hands involved, or so the marketing went in for.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Factories to meet this demand. They needed consistency and speed
above all speed. They couldn't wait around for sourdough.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
No way. The need for consistency drove the science to
isolate single predictable yeast strains. From the eighteen fifties, people
like Louis Pestier helped figure out how to isolate and
grow pure cultures of sac I see Sarah Vizier Baker's yeast.
This commercial yeast was uniform, It worked fast, It was reliable,
exactly what factory lines needed for standardization.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
But speeding things up meant losing something right, like the
flavor from the slow bacterial fermentation. How did they fix
that and go even faster?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
They added sugar, simple table sugar. It did two things. One,
it gave the commercial yeast a super quick food source,
so fermentation went into overdrive. Two, it added back some
sweetness to cover up the lack of complex flavors from
the missing acids. This let them slash proofing times down
to maybe less than an hour compared to you know, six, twelve,
even twenty four hours for traditional methods.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
And this whole quest for speed really hit its peak
with a huge innovation that basically redefined bread texture worldwide.
The Chorleywood Bread process.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
At Chorleywood, developed in the UK nineteen sixty one. It's
the absolute pinnacle of industrial bread efficiency. How it works
is it uses incredibly intense, high speed mechanical mixing, basically
beating the heck out of the dough to replace the
slow natural development time.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
How does beating dough replace hours of rising? What's the
mechanics there?
Speaker 2 (14:05):
So In traditional bread, enzyme's slowly break down starch proteins
called gluten gradually link up and form a network. It
takes time. Trollywood just uses brute force. Instead, the intense
energy input physically forces the gluten proteins glutenin and gliadin
to line up and form that structure almost instantly. This
(14:25):
cuts the bulk fermentation time needed dramatically, sometimes down to zero, and.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
The big wind for the industry apart from just speed.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Well apart from getting a wrapped loaf out the door
into these three hours start to finish the process, lets
bakers use lower protein flour because the machine is doing
the heavy lifting on structure. You don't need that really
high quality strong flower that traditional baking relies on. That
massively cut ingredient costs, which is why Chorlie Wood took
over the mass market for sandwich loaves pretty much everywhere.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So factories are pumping out these super fast, cheap loaves,
but then a weird problem pops up. Softness.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, the industrial bakers engineered these loaves to be incredibly soft.
Why because consumers started equating softness with freshness, especially once
bread was wrapped in plastic and you couldn't smell it
or squeeze it easily. But this extreme softness, this almost
flimsy structure, made the loaf a nightmare for people to
slice at home. It just squished, tor crumbled.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
The machine creates the problem, the machine provides the solution.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Precisely. It demanded the ultimate mechanical fix, factory pre sliced bread.
The official debut was July sixth, nineteen twenty eight, Chilico
Baking Company in Missouri, and the reaction wasn't just oh,
that's handy, It was apparently sheer joy.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That famous saying had to start somewhere the best thing.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Since exactly a reporter covering it wrote something like the
factory slices were so definitely better than anyone could possibly
slice by hand. One realizes instantly that here is a
refinement that will receive a hearty and permanent welcome, and Bam.
Sales reportedly jumped two thousand percent almost overnight, And.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Just like that, the greatest thing since sliced bread enters
the language not just convenient, but a symbol of the
whole mechanical age fixing every little problem. But this entire
trajectory speed softness, industrialization. It leads us right into the
health controversies we're grappling with today.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, the modern bread debate is really zeroed in undigestion,
and to get that, we need to quickly touch on
the structure that industry created. Structurally, bread is basically defined
as an elastic plastic foam.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Okay, elastic plastic foam. Let's break that down. What makes
dough able to stretch and spring back. That's the elastic part,
but also hold its shape once it's risen the plastic part.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
That's all down to the gluten network, which is formed
by two main proteins in wheat flour, glutenin and gleodin.
When you add water and work the dough either slowly
with time and enzymes or super fast with a trurely
wood mixer. These proteins start linking up. Gluten and molecules
are big. They form these long, stretchy strands. They connect
using special chemical bonds, disulfide bonds. That gives the dough
(17:02):
its elasticity. Let's it stretch and bounce back.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Okay, gluten in for stretch in spring. What about gleodin.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Gleadin molecules are smaller, They form shorter, kind of messier
links between those long gluten chains. Gleadin contributes more to
the dough's plasticity that's the ability to hold a new
shape once the CO two gas puffs it up. The
gleidin helps stop it from just collapsing back down immediately.
You need that perfect balance of elasticity and plasticity for
a good loaf.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Right now, this structure, and maybe more importantly, the speed
at which it is often for now, that seems central
to the problems people report today, like bloating discomfort. We
hear gluten blamed a lot, but the sources point to
maybe a more immediate issue linked to those super short
rising times.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Fodmas, Yes, FODMA piece it's an acronym stands for fermentable
oligosaccharides disacharides, monosaccharides, and polloles. Basically, there are types of
short chain carbs and sugar alcohols that aren't absorbed well
in our small intestine, so they travel down to the
lar and test and undigested, and there the gut bacteria
have a feast. They ferment these fodmps really rapidly. This
(18:07):
produces a lot of gas, which leads to bloating pain discomfort,
especially for people with irrible boal syndrome IBS.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
And the key connection here is that fast industrially made
bread often has a really high level of these FODMAPs.
Why does processing it quickly cause that.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
It's because that short rising time, maybe just an hour,
is enough time for the mechanical force or the fast
yeast to build the gluten structure, but it's nowhere near
enough time for the natural enzymes, especially the ones associated
with the bacteria in a traditional starter, to break down
those complex, hard to digest sugars. They simply haven't had
the chance to do the work of predigestion.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
This seems like the absolute crucial point. It's the technique,
the time allowed that's the main issue, maybe more so
than the specific type of.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Wheat used absolutely. There was a really important study on
this from the University of Hohenheim in Germany. They looked
into it and found that, yeah, they're small differences in
FODMP content between ancient grains like spelt and modern wheat. Sure,
but the massive difference maker time.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Can you share the key number from that study because
it really hits home.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, the study showed that letting the dough rise for
just four hours four hours breaks down something like ninety
percent of those indigestible FODM carbohydrates. Compare that to industrial
bread maybe process start to finish in under two hours,
it's going to have way higher levels of those compounds
left in it. So the digestibility really seems to hinge
(19:33):
almost entirely on the baker's patients letting that microbial community
do its predigestion job properly.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
So a traditional sour dough starter working away for twelve
or more hours, that complex mix of yeast and bacteria
is basically doing a lot of our digestive work for
us before we even eat the bread.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
That's a great way to put it. That's the full
benefit of the skeoy and it's not just FODM. The
sources also mentioned that long fermentation times are better at
breaking down other desirable things like phytates. Phytates are anti
nutrients that can block our bodies from absorbing minerals. Breaking
them down makes trace elements like iron and zinc in
the bread more biologically available to us, Plus you get
(20:11):
better flavor development.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Okay, now we have to tackle the elephant in the room,
gluten sensitivity, and we need to be really clear here
about the medical distinctions.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Absolutely crucial. For people with a confirmed diagnosis of celiac
disease or related conditions like dermatitis or pitiformists or gluten ataxia,
their reaction is an autoimmune response triggered specifically by the
gluten protein itself. For these individuals, the only treatment is
a lifelong strict gluten frey diet GFD. The science on
(20:41):
that is clear and settled, right.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
But then there's this other, much larger group of people
diagnosed with non celiac gluten sensitivity or NCGS. What's the
potential link between ncgs and this whole slow fermentation thing
we've been discussing.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Well, For NCGS patients, the standard advice is also a
gluten free diet, but there's growing research suggests that at
least some of these individuals might not be reacting primarily
to the gluten protein itself. They might actually be reacting
more strongly to that high load of fermentation byproducts the
fodmfps found in rapidly produced bread, and because traditional sourdough,
(21:14):
with its long fermentation, drastically reduces that FODMP load, some
people with milder ncgs report they can actually tolerate genuine,
long fermented sour dough bread much better than they can
tolerate standard industrial loaves, even though both contain gluten.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
So for some people, the digestive pain might not be
caused by the gluten structure itself, but by those leftover
rapidly fermenting sugars in their gut.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
That's the leading theory for a subset of ncgs. Yes,
the issue might not always be the protein structure, which
is in both types of bread. It can be more
about how quickly the dough is processed and how many
of those potentially irritating fermentable sugars are still present when
you eat it. And the key solution comes back to
time allowing proper fermentation.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Got it, Okay? One last quick point on safety related
to cooking, temperature, and color.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Acrylamide right, acrylamide, it's a chemical compound classed as neurotoxic
and potentially garcinogenic. It forms naturally in starchy foods when
they're heated above about one hundred and twenty celsius two
forty eight fahrenheit. It's part of the Mayard reaction, the
browning process that gives foods like bread their nice color
and flavor. So yes, it's present in bread.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
You know where in the bread does it tend to concentrate?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Research found that over ninety nine percent of the acrylamide
in a loaf of bread is located specifically in the crust.
So that really desirable dark color, the intense flavor, the
crispiness of the crust which comes from that high heat browning.
That's also where almost all of this compound is found.
Kind of an interesting trade off hashtag tack tasch TAC
conclusion and takeaways.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
So we've really traced quite a journey here from what
a charred paste thirty thousand years ago to the absolute
staff of life for huge empires, and now ending up
is this highly engineered foam caught right in the middle
of modern health debates.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah, the story of bread really mirrors the story of
human civilization in a way, you know, from just making
tough stuff edible to building the foundation for settled life
and then maybe sacrificing some of that original quality and
digestibility for industrial speed and convenience.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Okay, let's boil this down. What are the three biggest
takeaways from this deep dive for you, the listener.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
First, I'd say, remember why bread became so dominant in
the first place. It wasn't just calories. It was the grains.
Incredible storability, that ability to survive lean times, that resilience
against famine. That's what truly fueled early population growth, stabilized societies,
and gave farming its edge.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Okay, second takeaway.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Second, the crecial difference technically and maybe health wise between
traditional bread and a lot of modern bread often boils
down to one simple thing. Time long fermentation isn't just
about flavor, although that's great, it's biochemically essential for breaking
down compounds like fodmps that can cause digestive issues for
many people. Patience makes it more.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Digestible, right, time equals digestibility, And the.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Third and third, that ultimate symbol of modern ease, the
best thing since sliced bread, wasn't just a random invention.
It was a direct technological fix for a problem excessive
softness created by the industrial drive for purity and speed.
In the first place, it perfectly captures that shift towards
machine led food.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Production, which leads us perfectly into a final thought to chewance.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Yeah, a provocative thought for you to consider. If the quality,
the flavor, and crucially the digestibility of this ancient staple
food really hintes so much on just allowing enough time
for natural processes. If just four hours of patients can
potentially eliminate ninety percent of the compounds causing discomfort, then
what does our modern society's overwhelming preference for the fastest, cheapest,
(24:46):
most convenient industrial bread, often chemically stripped and rapidly processed,
really say about our current priorities? What fundamental value related
to this staff of life are we sacrificing for the sake.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Of speed qestion. That definitely gives you something to think
about next time you're near a bakery isle. Thanks for
joining us on this deep dive. We'll catch you on
the next one.
Welcome to the deep dive. We dig into the sources,
pull out the key insights and gets you right up
to speed. Today we're cracking open the secret life of bread.
It sounds so simple, but it's a food so foundational.
Its name is still basically shorthand for life, for money,
for you know, survival.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
It really is. You think flower water, heat, simple, right,
But when you actually look at the history bread is, well,
it's way more than just a staple food. It's genuinely
one of the first big successes in food technology, a
real disruptive innovation, you could say that completely altered how
human society developed. There's this huge history heading inside evidence
(00:38):
suggesting we were processing starches like thirty thousand years ago.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Thirty thousand years that's wow. Yeah, that's some serious history
packed into maybe the most everyday item in the kitchen.
Our sources for this dive are pretty wide ranging. We're
looking at everything from paleolithic archaeology, the dawn of civilization,
although we up to modern stuff like industrial food chemistry,
the physics of gluten, and the big modern debate. It's
about gut, health and digestion exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So our mission for you, the listener is really to
get beyond just the recipe. We want to synthesize how
this simple act mixing grain, water, maybe some air, how
that shaped entire empires, how it decided where people settled down,
and how it's still fueling these really intense modern arguments
about diet inflammation and what our bodies can or maybe
(01:24):
can't handle anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Okay, let's unpack this. Then. If we're starting thirty thousand
years ago, that's way before farming, right, we're talking Paleolithic yea,
So what exactly were people baking back then? It wasn't
a sourdough loaf presumably.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
No, definitely not your artisan sourdough.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Uh uh.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
The earliest evidence we have it actually predates the Neolithic,
the start of farming, by tens of thousands of years.
Sources point to this microscopic stuff starch residue found on
old grinding stones, rocks, you know. But in places like Europe, Australia,
and this residue it's not from cultivated grains like wheat.
It's from the roots of wild plants, things that cattails, ferns,
(02:00):
fiber stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Okay, so hunter gatherers were pounding these roots, not really
grinding like flour, but pounding them to get the starch out.
What were they trying to.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Do, Yeah, pounding or scraping. They were basically creating a
very very primitive kind of processed food. They'd get this
starch extract, mix it up with water into a paste
kind of a slurry, then spread that paste on a
hot rock, maybe over a fire, and what you get
is this dense, flat, probably pretty charred thing like a
primitive flat bread or maybe a biscuit. It was definitely
(02:28):
an intentional transformation, taking something raw and making it well
more calorie efficient.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
And the timing is really something you mentioned. The oldest
direct evidence actual charred bread bits, Yeah, found in Jordan.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
That's right, and a too fie insight data to about
fourteen thousan five hundred years ago. And that's critical because
it puts the technology, the know how of making bread
thousands of years before we generally mark the start of
the agricultural revolution, which is usually pegged around what ten
thousand BC.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
So the idea of processing starches into something cooked and
easier to eat was around long before people actually settled
down and started farming those starches exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
It proves the concept was there way before the full
commitment to agriculture, which.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Brings up the big question why even bother wild grains,
The seeds from grasses, they're tough, hard to digest, not
much yield. Why go through all that effort of grinding
or pounding, Why not just eat the seeds?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Well, raw grains are really tough customers. They have hard
outer layers, these things called enzyme inhibitors. They're just incredible, right, And.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Once they cleared that technological hurdle, society was kind of
primed for the Neilothica Revolution starting around ten thousand BC.
That's when things shifted from just preparing food to really
controlling the source.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, precisely, agriculture meant selective breeding. It wasn't accidental. Over
thousands of years, early farmers weren't just planting random seeds.
They deliberately picked the plants that gave better yields, were
easier to harvest, produced better quality grain. This human metaling
created the grains we know today, wheat, barley, rye. They're
(04:02):
heavily hybridized. They actually depend on us to cultivate them. Now,
their cultural artifacts as much as they are food.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Really, and what I find really striking in the sources
is that the big advantage farming societies had over one
hunter gatherers wasn't just like more calories overall, It was
about surviving the lean times.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
That is probably the single most critical point that's easy
to miss. Storability. Cereal grains, unlike roots, fresh stuff, even
preserve meat. They store incredibly well, keep them dry, keep
the pests away, and they can last for years. Think
about it. The biggest historical struggle was always getting through
winter or droughts. Being able to store grain gave societies
(04:41):
this amazing resilience against shortages, and that in turn dramatically
cut down child mortality rates. It gave settled farming communities
the edge they needed for huge sustained population growth.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
So storing grain didn't just mean more people, It meant
stable power structures. If you can guarantee food, you can
build complet.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Societies exactly right. Central grain storage became the ultimate source
of political and economic power. Just picture the giant granaries
in ancient Egypt or Rome controlling the grain, collecting it,
protecting it, distributing it. That gave rulers absolute control, which
is why the refinement of baking, making better bread was
seen by Egyptians, Greeks, Romans is more than just good cooking.
It was a sign of civilization.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
It's amazing how much political weight a simple food could carry.
And we still see that metaphor baked into our language,
don't we.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Oh. Absolutely, bread instantly became the symbol for basic needs
for survival. That Roman critique PanAm at your senses Bread
and Circuses points out that just keeping people fed and
entertained was often enough to keep them quiet. And even
the English word lord, if you trace it back to
Anglo saxon, it comes from luffwared, which literally means bread keeper.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
The keeper of the bread is the boss, and that
says it all really about the absolute priority of food
security back then. But for Ages, this vital bread was
well dense, unleaven flatbread or just a heavy paste. The
big leap the thing that gave is light airy bread.
That seems to have been a happy accident.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Right now, we shift gears from flatbreads think pita tortilla,
to the kind of loaf that rises and the process
probably kicked off when someone forgot about some dough left
milled grain or dough sitting around unintentionally mixed with water,
maybe for too long, and it just started to ferment.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
What needs to be present for that accident to happen
just flour and water left out pretty much.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, you need yeast spores and bacteria, and they are
literally everywhere in the air, on the grain itself, on
your hands. If you leave a bowl of wet flour
paste out, these naturally occurring tiny organisms will find it,
start munching on the starches and sugars and begin producing gas,
so the bubbles.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
That's just biology happening unintentionally at first.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Precisely, The sources suggest that the earliest leaven bread using
some kind of wild fermentation might go back as far
as six thousand BC the Sumerians in Mesopotamia. This knowledge
how to make bread rise was incredibly valuable. It seems
to have passed to the Egyptians around three thousand BC,
and the Egyptians are often credited with really refining the process,
(07:10):
moving it from just an accident to intentionally adding cultures
to the dough.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Okay, but before yeast came in convenient packets, how did
these early bakers actually capture and keep that leavening agent going?
Where did the magic reliably come from?
Speaker 2 (07:22):
They were incredibly resourceful, often using byproducts for making other
fermented things like beer or wine. Plenty of the elder,
the Roman writer and naturalists, he actually wrote about this stuff.
He noticed different regions had different tricks.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
What did Plany notice? What were the main methods?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Well, he noted the most common way was basically the
sour dough method we still use. You keep back a
piece of dough, the starter from yesterday's bake, keep feeding
it flour and water, and the culture stays alive. But
he specifically pointed out differences between say, northern tribes and
people around the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Based on what they drank. I'm guessing beer versus wine.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Exactly that Plany saw the But the Galls and Iberians
who during a lot of beer use the barn that's
the foam skimmed off the top of fermenting beer to
make their bread, and he noted it made the bread
noticeably lighter, more airy, a really good predictable yeast source. Meanwhile,
in wine drinking areas, bakers might mix up a paste
(08:18):
using grape juice and flour, let that ferment and then
use that culture in their bread dough.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That's brilliant. The waste from making one staple fuels the
next staple. But let's go back to the sour dough starter.
The most common method. You called it a cob y, right.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Cob why it stands for symbiotic community of bacteria and yeast.
It's not just one thing, it's a whole little ecosystem
working together. You've got the yeast part, often strains like
sacromices or Candida. They eat the sugars from the flower
starch and they produce carbon dioxide gas CO two plus
a little bit of alcohol.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And the CO two gas gets trapped by the gluten,
makes the bubbles, the rise, the texture. We know, Yeah, okay,
but what's the other half, the backa doing in there? Ah?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
The bacteria, usually various types of lactobacilli, they're doing something
different chemically. They also eat sugars, but they produce lactic
acid and ascetic acid. It's the lactic acid mainly that
gives sour dough that characteristic tiny, slightly sour flavor. That's
what makes it taste different.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
So bacteria for flavor, is that their only job? Or
is there another function?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Oh? A huge functional purpose preservation making those acids lactic
and acetic lowers the overall pH of the dough makes
it more acidic. This acidic environment makes it really hard
for common spoilage stuff like mold or bad bacteria to grow.
It even inhibits Bacillus subtilis, which causes something called rope
spoilage in industrial bread. So by lowering the pH, the
(09:43):
bacteria act as a natural preservative. That's why you can
keep a starter going pretty much forever just by feeding
it regularly. You hear about bakers today with starters that
are generations even centuries old.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Amazing. This slow, natural, complex process based on an ancient
axi is still seen as the gold standard for flavor,
structure and as we'll get to maybe even digestibility. But
you know, as civilization sped up that kind of patience,
well it became a problem for making bread on a
massive scale.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, the industrial era really changed the game for bread.
Everything became about two things, visual purity meaning super white bread,
and industrial speed.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
The sources talk about white flower becoming a huge data symbol.
Why white what was a big deal?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well, traditionally getting flour really white men a lot of sifting.
You had to remove the bran, the outer layer and
the germ, the oily part that was hard work, and
it wasted a fair bit of the grain. So white
bread was basically a signal that you were wealthy. You
could afford to throw away the darker, actually more nutritious parts.
Only rich people ate pure white bread.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
But then late eighteen hundreds new machines came along that
made this much easier, right industrial mills exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
These new steel roller mills were incredibly efficient. They could
completely strip away the germ, which has healthy fats and vitamins,
and the brand full of fiber and minerals. What was
left was this very fine, perfectly white, very shelf stable flour.
Because the oils in the germ could make flour go rancid,
removing them helped it last longer, but yet it also
(11:13):
stripped out most of the inherent nutritional value.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Sounds like a classic case of technology creating a new problem,
a nutritional deficit.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
It absolutely was. When everyone started eating this depleted white flour,
you saw outbreaks of deficiency diseases like palagra berry berry
linked to a lack of B vitamins, which led directly
to the practice. We still have fortification, where governments mandate
adding back essential nutrients, calcium, iron, d vitamins into refined flour.
So the modern white loaf basically needs fixing to put
(11:42):
back what the machines took out in the first place.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
And this technological shift happened alongside a really rapid change
where people got their bread. The sources say in America,
like ninety percent of bread was home baked in eighteen ninety,
but by nineteen thirty factories were dominant.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
The shift was stunningly fast. Convenience played a part, sure,
but there was also this big wave of well anxiety germophobia.
Almost early twentieth century there was a real public fear campaign.
Home baking started to seem unhygienic. People got suspicious of
the natural microbes, the sourdough germs. Some writers actually described
fermentation as millions of tiny worms being born and dying
(12:18):
in the dough.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Wow, turning this ancient respected process into something scary and gross.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Right, But factory bread that was marketed as pure, scientific, safe,
made by shiny machines, wrapped up tight. It was the
perfect controlled product of the modern age, no messy, slow
human hands involved, or so the marketing went in for.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Factories to meet this demand. They needed consistency and speed
above all speed. They couldn't wait around for sourdough.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
No way. The need for consistency drove the science to
isolate single predictable yeast strains. From the eighteen fifties, people
like Louis Pestier helped figure out how to isolate and
grow pure cultures of sac I see Sarah Vizier Baker's yeast.
This commercial yeast was uniform, It worked fast, It was reliable,
exactly what factory lines needed for standardization.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
But speeding things up meant losing something right, like the
flavor from the slow bacterial fermentation. How did they fix
that and go even faster?
Speaker 2 (13:14):
They added sugar, simple table sugar. It did two things. One,
it gave the commercial yeast a super quick food source,
so fermentation went into overdrive. Two, it added back some
sweetness to cover up the lack of complex flavors from
the missing acids. This let them slash proofing times down
to maybe less than an hour compared to you know, six, twelve,
even twenty four hours for traditional methods.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
And this whole quest for speed really hit its peak
with a huge innovation that basically redefined bread texture worldwide.
The Chorleywood Bread process.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
At Chorleywood, developed in the UK nineteen sixty one. It's
the absolute pinnacle of industrial bread efficiency. How it works
is it uses incredibly intense, high speed mechanical mixing, basically
beating the heck out of the dough to replace the
slow natural development time.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
How does beating dough replace hours of rising? What's the
mechanics there?
Speaker 2 (14:05):
So In traditional bread, enzyme's slowly break down starch proteins
called gluten gradually link up and form a network. It
takes time. Trollywood just uses brute force. Instead, the intense
energy input physically forces the gluten proteins glutenin and gliadin
to line up and form that structure almost instantly. This
(14:25):
cuts the bulk fermentation time needed dramatically, sometimes down to zero, and.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
The big wind for the industry apart from just speed.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Well apart from getting a wrapped loaf out the door
into these three hours start to finish the process, lets
bakers use lower protein flour because the machine is doing
the heavy lifting on structure. You don't need that really
high quality strong flower that traditional baking relies on. That
massively cut ingredient costs, which is why Chorlie Wood took
over the mass market for sandwich loaves pretty much everywhere.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So factories are pumping out these super fast, cheap loaves,
but then a weird problem pops up. Softness.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, the industrial bakers engineered these loaves to be incredibly soft.
Why because consumers started equating softness with freshness, especially once
bread was wrapped in plastic and you couldn't smell it
or squeeze it easily. But this extreme softness, this almost
flimsy structure, made the loaf a nightmare for people to
slice at home. It just squished, tor crumbled.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
The machine creates the problem, the machine provides the solution.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Precisely. It demanded the ultimate mechanical fix, factory pre sliced bread.
The official debut was July sixth, nineteen twenty eight, Chilico
Baking Company in Missouri, and the reaction wasn't just oh,
that's handy, It was apparently sheer joy.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That famous saying had to start somewhere the best thing.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Since exactly a reporter covering it wrote something like the
factory slices were so definitely better than anyone could possibly
slice by hand. One realizes instantly that here is a
refinement that will receive a hearty and permanent welcome, and Bam.
Sales reportedly jumped two thousand percent almost overnight, And.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Just like that, the greatest thing since sliced bread enters
the language not just convenient, but a symbol of the
whole mechanical age fixing every little problem. But this entire
trajectory speed softness, industrialization. It leads us right into the
health controversies we're grappling with today.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Yeah, the modern bread debate is really zeroed in undigestion,
and to get that, we need to quickly touch on
the structure that industry created. Structurally, bread is basically defined
as an elastic plastic foam.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Okay, elastic plastic foam. Let's break that down. What makes
dough able to stretch and spring back. That's the elastic part,
but also hold its shape once it's risen the plastic part.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
That's all down to the gluten network, which is formed
by two main proteins in wheat flour, glutenin and gleodin.
When you add water and work the dough either slowly
with time and enzymes or super fast with a trurely
wood mixer. These proteins start linking up. Gluten and molecules
are big. They form these long, stretchy strands. They connect
using special chemical bonds, disulfide bonds. That gives the dough
(17:02):
its elasticity. Let's it stretch and bounce back.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Okay, gluten in for stretch in spring. What about gleodin.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Gleadin molecules are smaller, They form shorter, kind of messier
links between those long gluten chains. Gleadin contributes more to
the dough's plasticity that's the ability to hold a new
shape once the CO two gas puffs it up. The
gleidin helps stop it from just collapsing back down immediately.
You need that perfect balance of elasticity and plasticity for
a good loaf.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Right now, this structure, and maybe more importantly, the speed
at which it is often for now, that seems central
to the problems people report today, like bloating discomfort. We
hear gluten blamed a lot, but the sources point to
maybe a more immediate issue linked to those super short
rising times.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Fodmas, Yes, FODMA piece it's an acronym stands for fermentable
oligosaccharides disacharides, monosaccharides, and polloles. Basically, there are types of
short chain carbs and sugar alcohols that aren't absorbed well
in our small intestine, so they travel down to the
lar and test and undigested, and there the gut bacteria
have a feast. They ferment these fodmps really rapidly. This
(18:07):
produces a lot of gas, which leads to bloating pain discomfort,
especially for people with irrible boal syndrome IBS.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
And the key connection here is that fast industrially made
bread often has a really high level of these FODMAPs.
Why does processing it quickly cause that.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
It's because that short rising time, maybe just an hour,
is enough time for the mechanical force or the fast
yeast to build the gluten structure, but it's nowhere near
enough time for the natural enzymes, especially the ones associated
with the bacteria in a traditional starter, to break down
those complex, hard to digest sugars. They simply haven't had
the chance to do the work of predigestion.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
This seems like the absolute crucial point. It's the technique,
the time allowed that's the main issue, maybe more so
than the specific type of.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Wheat used absolutely. There was a really important study on
this from the University of Hohenheim in Germany. They looked
into it and found that, yeah, they're small differences in
FODMP content between ancient grains like spelt and modern wheat. Sure,
but the massive difference maker time.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Can you share the key number from that study because
it really hits home.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, the study showed that letting the dough rise for
just four hours four hours breaks down something like ninety
percent of those indigestible FODM carbohydrates. Compare that to industrial
bread maybe process start to finish in under two hours,
it's going to have way higher levels of those compounds
left in it. So the digestibility really seems to hinge
(19:33):
almost entirely on the baker's patients letting that microbial community
do its predigestion job properly.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
So a traditional sour dough starter working away for twelve
or more hours, that complex mix of yeast and bacteria
is basically doing a lot of our digestive work for
us before we even eat the bread.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
That's a great way to put it. That's the full
benefit of the skeoy and it's not just FODM. The
sources also mentioned that long fermentation times are better at
breaking down other desirable things like phytates. Phytates are anti
nutrients that can block our bodies from absorbing minerals. Breaking
them down makes trace elements like iron and zinc in
the bread more biologically available to us, Plus you get
(20:11):
better flavor development.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Okay, now we have to tackle the elephant in the room,
gluten sensitivity, and we need to be really clear here
about the medical distinctions.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Absolutely crucial. For people with a confirmed diagnosis of celiac
disease or related conditions like dermatitis or pitiformists or gluten ataxia,
their reaction is an autoimmune response triggered specifically by the
gluten protein itself. For these individuals, the only treatment is
a lifelong strict gluten frey diet GFD. The science on
(20:41):
that is clear and settled, right.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
But then there's this other, much larger group of people
diagnosed with non celiac gluten sensitivity or NCGS. What's the
potential link between ncgs and this whole slow fermentation thing
we've been discussing.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Well, For NCGS patients, the standard advice is also a
gluten free diet, but there's growing research suggests that at
least some of these individuals might not be reacting primarily
to the gluten protein itself. They might actually be reacting
more strongly to that high load of fermentation byproducts the
fodmfps found in rapidly produced bread, and because traditional sourdough,
(21:14):
with its long fermentation, drastically reduces that FODMP load, some
people with milder ncgs report they can actually tolerate genuine,
long fermented sour dough bread much better than they can
tolerate standard industrial loaves, even though both contain gluten.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
So for some people, the digestive pain might not be
caused by the gluten structure itself, but by those leftover
rapidly fermenting sugars in their gut.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
That's the leading theory for a subset of ncgs. Yes,
the issue might not always be the protein structure, which
is in both types of bread. It can be more
about how quickly the dough is processed and how many
of those potentially irritating fermentable sugars are still present when
you eat it. And the key solution comes back to
time allowing proper fermentation.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Got it, Okay? One last quick point on safety related
to cooking, temperature, and color.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Acrylamide right, acrylamide, it's a chemical compound classed as neurotoxic
and potentially garcinogenic. It forms naturally in starchy foods when
they're heated above about one hundred and twenty celsius two
forty eight fahrenheit. It's part of the Mayard reaction, the
browning process that gives foods like bread their nice color
and flavor. So yes, it's present in bread.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
You know where in the bread does it tend to concentrate?
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Research found that over ninety nine percent of the acrylamide
in a loaf of bread is located specifically in the crust.
So that really desirable dark color, the intense flavor, the
crispiness of the crust which comes from that high heat browning.
That's also where almost all of this compound is found.
Kind of an interesting trade off hashtag tack tasch TAC
conclusion and takeaways.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
So we've really traced quite a journey here from what
a charred paste thirty thousand years ago to the absolute
staff of life for huge empires, and now ending up
is this highly engineered foam caught right in the middle
of modern health debates.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah, the story of bread really mirrors the story of
human civilization in a way, you know, from just making
tough stuff edible to building the foundation for settled life
and then maybe sacrificing some of that original quality and
digestibility for industrial speed and convenience.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Okay, let's boil this down. What are the three biggest
takeaways from this deep dive for you, the listener.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
First, I'd say, remember why bread became so dominant in
the first place. It wasn't just calories. It was the grains.
Incredible storability, that ability to survive lean times, that resilience
against famine. That's what truly fueled early population growth, stabilized societies,
and gave farming its edge.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Okay, second takeaway.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Second, the crecial difference technically and maybe health wise between
traditional bread and a lot of modern bread often boils
down to one simple thing. Time long fermentation isn't just
about flavor, although that's great, it's biochemically essential for breaking
down compounds like fodmps that can cause digestive issues for
many people. Patience makes it more.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Digestible, right, time equals digestibility, And the.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Third and third, that ultimate symbol of modern ease, the
best thing since sliced bread, wasn't just a random invention.
It was a direct technological fix for a problem excessive
softness created by the industrial drive for purity and speed.
In the first place, it perfectly captures that shift towards
machine led food.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Production, which leads us perfectly into a final thought to chewance.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Yeah, a provocative thought for you to consider. If the quality,
the flavor, and crucially the digestibility of this ancient staple
food really hintes so much on just allowing enough time
for natural processes. If just four hours of patients can
potentially eliminate ninety percent of the compounds causing discomfort, then
what does our modern society's overwhelming preference for the fastest, cheapest,
(24:46):
most convenient industrial bread, often chemically stripped and rapidly processed,
really say about our current priorities? What fundamental value related
to this staff of life are we sacrificing for the sake.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Of speed qestion. That definitely gives you something to think
about next time you're near a bakery isle. Thanks for
joining us on this deep dive. We'll catch you on
the next one.
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