The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-04-10
AFEW FACTS
 ABOUT BREAD

The history of bread as Eood reads like a romance! It has played an important part in the destinies of mankind and it's struggles through the ages to perfection. The progress of nations through their different pc riods Of development can be traced by the quality and quantity of bread they have used.
 1 No other food has taken such an 1 important part in the civilization of man.
 ] To a large extent it has been the means of changing his habits from those of a. savage to tfsese of a. civ iIfzed beirg. It has supplied the peaceful pursuits of agriculture and turned him from war and the chase. It is an interesting fact that the civilized and the senni-civilized people 1 of the earth can be divided into two
 classes based upon their principal Ecereal foods---lthe rice eaters and the bread eaters.
 Everyone admits that rice eaters are less progressive, while bread eaters
 have always been the leaders of civ iization.
 It is an interesting fact that just as
 Japan is changing from a rice-ea eating
 nation to a bread eating nation she is
 asserting her power.
 Anyone who stops to consider the
 history of nations will see that this
 matter of what we eat is the one
 question of vital importance.
 Bread is one of the earliest, the
 most generally used and one of the
 most important foods used by man.
 Without bread the world would not { exist without great hardship. On
 bread alone nation of people can
 exist and to sit down to a meal with , out it causes us to feel at once that , something is missing.
 Bread is baked from many sub
 stances, although when we think of
 bread we usually think of wheat bread. It is sometimes made from D roots, fruits and the bark of trees r but generally. only from grains such l as wheat, rye, corn, etc. The word . bread comes from an old word bray l meaning to pound. This came from
 the method used in preparing the y food. Food which was pounded was r said to be prayed, and later this
 | spelling was changed to bread - | Properly speaking, however, these prayed or ground materials are no- S really bread in our sense of using n the term until they are moisfenet e with water, when it becomes dough y The word dough is an old one, mean h ing to "moisten.'' This dough wa e in o1den times immediately baked il d hot ashes, and a hard indigestibl, = lump of bread was the result. Ac y cidentally it was discovered that i s the dough was left for time befor, s baking, allowing it to ferment, i
 would, when mixed with more dough n swell up and become porous. Thu e we got our word loaf from an o1t }. word 1ifan, which meant to raise III I or to lift up
 oI Tt is not clearly known when or b lS whom wheat was discovered, but 79 seems to have been known from tn q earliest times. It is mentioned i ,5 the Bible, can be traced to ancien ~ Egypt and there are records show a ing that the Chinese cultivate s wheat as early as 2700 B. c. Todd 70 it supplies the principal article fo ac making bread to all the civilized na
 tions of the world.
 r- The origin of the wheat plant ld said to have been a kind of gras
 which is given a Latin name Aeg 10 Iops ovata by the botanists.
 This is a question that has puz of z1ed the worlds scientists for moI I than two thousand years. Fro1 1e time to time it has been reported |
 investigators in various parts of th he 1 world that here and there whes ot has been found growing wild an st doing well, but every time st furthe ed investigation is made. it develoI lI- that the wheat has been cultivate on by some one. There is as yet T
 evidence for believing that whe1 e. will grow in a wild state.---F'rom tf ell Book of Wonders. Published an 'n- copyrighted by the Bureau of Indu' ID. C.