The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts
ow on earth did humans learn to bake? Presumably the short answer is “through trial and error”, but what possessed them to grind ears of wheat into flour in the first place? And then to mix it with water and yeast and cook it?This is just a small component of my giant, endless questioning about how the hell humans ever worked out anything, survival-wise.? How many people died before they worked out which was the bit to reject? People are weird, I tell you.
You don’t need a teacher, you just knead a bit of dough to get started.. It was wild varieties of wheats and barleys, mixed with starchy tubers. That’s long before any cereals were cultivated and before pottery was developed; an age with flint tools only. No yeast was needed, but they had fires and had been roasting meat for thousands of years, so the idea of cooking food to make it easier to digest was familiar.
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