Sliced bread is undoubtedly a good thing – it saves time, and the effort of kneading. But it’s a real shame that so few of us get to taste the yeasty deliciousness that is home-made bread. And that’s where Home-Made Bread Day comes in!
The origins of this Day are shrouded in mystery, but its purpose and benefits are obvious. The invention of the bread-maker has taken a lot of the effort out of baking, meaning that there is no reason why everyone shouldn’t enjoy home-made bread, which is often of much higher quality than the stuff you can buy in a shop. Home-baked bread is often healthier, higher in fiber and lower in salt and additives than commercial varieties, and the recipe can be modified to suit the maker’s tastes, with grains, spices or other additions.
- It takes 9 seconds for a combine to harvest enough wheat to make about 70 loaves of bread.
- Each American consumes, on average, 53 pounds of bread per year.
- Every year in the UK around 12 billion sandwiches are eaten. That means 380 every second.
- An average slice of packaged bread contains only 1 gram of fat and 75 to 80 calories.
- Bread is closely tied to religious expression and communion. Hot cross buns commemorate Lent and Good Friday, Greek Easter breads are set with eggs dyed red to denote the blood of Christ, and Jewish families celebrate the coming of the Sabbath on Friday evening with challah.
- In 1997, Kansas wheat farmers produced enough wheat to make 36.5 billion loaves of bread, or enough to provide each person on earth with 6 loaves of bread.
- Napoleon gave a common bread its name when he demanded a loaf of dark rye bread for his horse during the Prussian campaign. “Pain pour Nicole,” he ordered, which meant “Bread for Nicole,” his horse. To Germanic ears, the request sounded like “pumpernickel,” which is the term we use today for this traditional loaf.
- In Britain, the ceremony of First Footing is traditionally observed in the early hours of New Year’s Day. A piece of bread is left outside a door, with a piece of coal and a silver coin, and is supposed to bring you food, warmth and riches in the year ahead.
- The “pocket” in pita bread is made by steam. The steam puffs up the dough and, as the bread cools and flattens, a pocket is left in the middle.
- The fastest “bun” in the West goes to a team of bakers from Wheat Montana Farms and Bakery who reclaimed the Guinness World Record in 1995. They harvested and milled wheat from the field and then mixed, scaled, shaped and baked a loaf in exactly eight minutes, 13 seconds.
- Scandinavian traditions hold that if a boy and girl eat from the same loaf, they are bound to fall in love.
- In Russia, bread (and salt) are symbols of welcome.
- Superstition says it is bad luck to turn a loaf of bread upside down or cut an unbaked loaf.
- Legend has it that whoever eats the last piece of bread has to kiss the cook.
- The ancient Greeks were already producing more than 80 types of bread in 2500 B.C.
- Bread was so important to the Egyptian way of life that it was used as a type of currency. They revered it so much they would often place it in the tombs of their dead.
- Bakers were powerful credit brokers during the Middle Ages in France. They often loaned out bread as currency and as a form of credit. King Louis IV said, “He who controls a nation’s bread is a greater ruler than he who controls their souls.”
- Bakers used to be fined if their loaves were underweight so they added an extra loaf to every dozen, hence the term “Baker’s Dozen.”
- Assuming a sandwich was eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it would take 168 days to eat the amount of bread produced from one bushel of wheat. A family of four could live 10 years off the bread produced by one acre of wheat.
- The inner part of the bread encased in the crust is called the “crumb” hence why small bits of this part of the bread are called “crumbs.”
- Sliced bread was only invented in 1928 and was referred to as the best thing since bagged bread.
- The distinction of “upper crust” comes from the 1600s. When the bread was made in stone ovens the bottoms would become dirty from ash and soot. If you were wealthy you cut the bottom crust off and just ate the “upper crust” part of the bread.
- Before the Eraser was invented people used soft bread crumbs to erase pencil marks.
- From 1266 until 2008 it was illegal in England to sell bread that weighed 600 grams.
- When the buttered bread is right side up and dropped from a table, there’s an ~80% it will fall butter side down. This is because an average slice of buttered bread falling will complete a full turn in approx. 8 feet.
- Bread appears 360 times in the Bible (KJV). 280 times in the Old Testament and 80 times in the New Testament.
- The ancient Egyptians used moldy bread to treat infections that arose from dirt in burn wounds.
- A rolled up piece of white bread was used to erase graphite before rubber erasers were invented.
- The automatic popup bread toaster was patented before the bread slicing machine.
Sources:
