Evidence of the first human beings to manipulate the genetics of plants found in the wild, occurred in what is today, the Fertile Crescent. The origins of bread begin in a field of grass about 8,000 years BCE. In Syria, on a cliff overlooking the Dead Sea, archaeologists sifting soil for little grains of vegetable matter lost in the earth 10,000 years ago, agree to this theory. Something in the way humans coexisted with cereal grasses had changed. Soon after this incredible discovery of plant utilization, agriculture was born! History’s societal structure suggests that the individuals responsible for the domestication of wheat and “agriculture” could be female, as a mesolithic female’s role was typically to be a gatherer and male’s role- a hunter.

In the Encyclopedia of Food Microbiology, Michael Gaenzle writes: “One of the oldest sourdough breads dates from 3700 BCE and was excavated in Switzerland. Bread production relied on the use of sourdough as a leavening agent for most of human history; the use of baker’s yeast as a leavening agent dates back less than 150 years.”

The first, known, recorded documentation of bread was in Egypt, where it had become a food staple to the Egyptian working glass, between 3000-5000 BCE. The discovery of commercial yeast wasn’t until the beginning of the 19th century! That was only 200 years ago! Before this time, all human history depended on the slow fermentation process of wheat and water.

The process of sourdough fermentation involves harboring a colony of wild yeast in this slurry. This “sourdough starter": forms a symbiotic culture of lactic acid bacteria and wild yeast that produce carbon dioxide responsible for the rising of bread doughs.

A few thousand years later, sourdough bread reached the Greeks and later, the Romans. After the fall of the Roman Empire, and for the next several centuries, sourdough became the determinant factor between famine and survival through the rest of the Middle Ages.

Fast forwarding to the 1600’s, let me mention Antoine Van Leewonhoek. A Dutch scientist, He was credited as the founder of microbiology with his advancements to the microscope that could magnify objects up to 275 times. This interest in what yeast is and what it does will change the world’s perception of bread in the next few hundred years.

“When the cost of bread rises you get a revolution. The most famous revolutionary phrase ever uttered was by Marie Antoinette, who said, ‘if the people don’t have bread, let them eat cake’. She actually said, ‘brioche, which, for anybody who’s had one, is not that different from a very nice cake.’ The unfortunate thing is that Marie Antoinette never said this. She never would have said it. It was attributed to her 50 years after the revolution, when revolutionaries wanted to pin the cause of the thirty-year revolution on her… In the year 1789, six thousand French women marched through dreary October rains to Versailles to demand a fair price for sourdough bread. During the thirty-year period of 1690-1720, France endured one hundred and eighty-two food uprisings. Between 1760 and 1789, the years leading up to the French Revolution, that number nearly quadrupled. On six hundred and fifty two occasions the people of France took to the streets.”
-Eric Pallant, "The Rise and Fall of Sourdough:6000 Years of Bread"; "A Brief History on Sourdough"

200 years after his time, a French biochemist, Louis Pasteur, would put the pieces together to understand that the yeast cells first studied by Leewonhoek, were living organisms responsible for the leavening of bread and fermentation of beer and wine. This huge leap of knowledge brings us to the 1700’s and the beginning of commercially ready yeast. Mass production of bread would become essential once again to feed the hungry textile workers of the time.

Master bakers from France then took their sourdough techniques to Northern California during the California Gold Rush in 1848. These bakers brought their knowledge and their mills to those pioneer mining towns, where bread, as always, was a staple provision for American entrepreneurs. To this day, Americans (as well as people all over the world) seek out a delicious, crusty, wholesome loaf of sourdough bread!

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sourdough#:~:text=In%20the%20Encyclopedia%20of%20Food,years%20earlier%22%2C%20and%20%22Bread

https://www.exploreyeast.com/yeast-and-fermentation/louis-pasteur-the-father-of-fermentation/

https://fermentology.pubpub.org/pub/h6fg4us2/release/2

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/rise-and-fall-sourdough-6000-years-bread?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=19975578621&utm_content=148918386660&utm_term=&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwj4K5BhDYARIsAD1Ly2rymeF6mtApTcC1GjZEkyF4LSaBCdGMl63RU3RKQ8JGp6jEWgLPbUUaAtyMEALw_wcB