THE BREAD OF ANTIQUITY 233 



old, however, since the use of alcoholic beverages dates back 

 to the very dawn of history, and the authentic record of 

 raised or leavened bread is but little more than 3000 years 

 old. 



214. The Bread of Antiquity. The original method of 

 bread making and the method employed by savage tribes of 

 to-day is to mix crushed grain and water until a paste is 

 formed, and then to bake this over a camp fire. The result 

 is a hard compact substance known as unleavened bread. 

 A considerable improvement over this tasteless mass is 

 self-raised bread. If dough is left standing in a warm place 

 a number of hours, it swells up with gas and becomes porous, 

 and when baked, is less compact and hard than the savage 

 bread. Exposure to air and warmth brings about changes in 

 dough as well as in fruit juices, and alters the character of 

 the dough and the bread made from it. Bread made in this 

 way would not seem palatable to civilized man of the present 

 day, accustomed, as he is, to delicious bread made light and 

 porous by yeast ; but to the ancients, the least softening and 

 lightening was welcome, and self-fermented bread, therefore, 

 supplanted the original unleavened bread. 



Soon it was discovered that a pinch of this fermented dough 

 acted as a starter on a fresh batch of dough. Hence, a little 

 of the fermented dough was carefully saved from a batch, 

 and when the next bread was made, the fermented dough, or 

 leaven, was worked into the fresh dough and served to raise 

 the mass more quickly and effectively than mere exposure to 

 air and warmth could do in the same length of time. This 

 use of leaven for raising bread has been practiced for ages. 



Grape juice mixed with millet ferments quickly and 

 strongly, and the Romans learned to use this mixture for 

 bread raising, kneading a very small amount of it through 

 the dough. 



