The Oldest Bread in the World (2024)

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The Oldest Bread in the World? ›

In a groundbreaking discovery, archaeologists in Turkey unearthed what they believe to be the world's oldest bread. The find dates back to an impressive 6600 BC and was located at Catalhoyuk, an archaeological site in southern Turkey's Konya province.

Our ancestors did not yet know the principles of leavening, but their recipe was by no means a foregone conclusion. Cereals (barley and wild wheat seeds, ancestors of domesticated wheat) were broken, shelled, crushed and sieved. This flour was then mixed with water to form a dough to be cooked on embers or hot stones.

Flatbread, the earliest form of bread, is still eaten, especially in much of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. The principal grains used in such breads are corn (maize), barley, millet, and buckwheat—all lacking sufficient gluten (elastic protein) to make raised breads—and wheat and rye.

Archaeologists from Necmettin Erbakan University say they have discovered the world's oldest known bread, dating back to 6600 BCE, at Çatalhöyük, a renowned Neolithic settlement in central Anatolia, Türkiye (formerly Turkey). The 8,600-year-old bread found at Çatalhöyük in Türkiye.

The oldest evidence of bread-making has been found in a 14,500-year-old Natufian site in Jordan's northeastern desert. Around 10,000 BC, with the dawn of the Neolithic age and the spread of agriculture, grains became the mainstay of making bread.

Archaeologists found the scraps of what is believed to be flatbread around a fireplace at a Natufian hunter-gatherer site called Shubayqa, located in northeastern Jordan. It's believed to be around 14,400 years old.

History. Ancient Egyptian aristocracy had access to white bread. In this image bread is depicted in Egypt in about 2,500 BC. Bread made with grass grains goes back to the pre-agriculture Natufi proto-civilization 12,000 years ago.

So when the first bread makers—a group of hunter-gatherers living in the Middle East 14,000 years ago now called the Natufians—baked the first flatbreads, they made them as celebratory foods, not as staples. Bread began as the Natufian version of our wedding cake.

These were large round sourdough breads, segmented into eight pieces, with a hole in the center of the loaf. They often had an identifying stamp imprinted on the crust and before baking, each bread had a cord tied around its “waist.”

In predynastic times, 4000 BC, Ancient Egyptians were the first to discover yeast to ferment the bread. Using yeast, flour, salt, pepper, spices, cereal grains, and emmer – an ancestor type of wheat rich in fiber – they made the first loaf of bread.

Is sourdough bread the oldest bread? ›

Although the oldest extant example of bread we have is an unleavened Swiss loaf dated to around 5700 years ago, the oldest evidence of sourdough we currently have hails from Egypt in around 1500BCE, where it is assumed that someone left either a flatbread dough mixture or porridge out overnight.

According to history, the earliest bread was made in or around 8000 BC in the Middle East, specifically Egypt. The quern was the first known grinding tool.

Thus many theologians conclude that Christ would have used unleavened bread. St. John, in his rendition of the Gospel, says that the Last Supper took place the night before the feast of Unleavened Bread (cf. Jn 13), and some scholars argue that the bread would have been leavened.

Our ancestors typically ate one substantial meal each day, supplemented with nuts and fruits as snacks.

The diet of the earliest hominins was probably somewhat similar to the diet of modern chimpanzees: omnivorous, including large quantities of fruit, leaves, flowers, bark, insects and meat (e.g., Andrews & Martin 1991; Milton 1999; Watts 2008).

8,600 years ago, a baker in Turkey mixed flour and water to make bread dough, pressed it to check its readiness and then didn't bake it. This particular bread that was left uncooked near an oven has now been dubbed as the world's oldest by archaeologists.

Charred crumbs of a flatbread made by Natufian hunter-gatherers from wild wheat, wild barley and plant roots between 11,600 and 14,600 years ago have been found at the archaeological site of Shubayqa 1 in the Black Desert in Jordan, predating the earliest-known making of bread from cultivated wheat by thousands of ...

According to Navajo tradition, frybread was created in 1864 using the flour, sugar, salt and lard that was given to them by the United States government when the Navajo, who were living in Arizona, were forced to make the 300-mile journey known as the "Long Walk" and relocate to Bosque Redondo, New Mexico, onto land ...

Another surprise is that China, with its population exceeding 1.4 billion people, comes in at around just 5.83 kilograms (almost 13 pounds) of bread per capita per year, and the second most populated country in the world, India, eats the least amount of bread, coming in a 1.75 kilos (or almost four pounds per person) ...

1492 Legend has it Christopher Columbus brings a small crock of sourdough starter to the New World. Unleavened breads made from cornmeal, however, go on to be the first breads embraced by European settlers in the Americas.

How did they make bread in the Old world? ›

Early humans made bread by mixing crushed grains with water and spreading the mixture on stones to bake in the sun. Later, similar mixtures were baked in hot ashes. The ancient Egyptians are credited with making the first leavened bread. Perhaps a batch of dough was allowed to stand before it was baked.

It was made by grinding cereal grains, such as wheat, millet or barley, into flour, then kneading it with a liquid, perhaps adding yeast to make the dough rise and lighten, and finally baking.

According to history, the earliest bread was made in or around 8000 BC in the Middle East, specifically Egypt. The quern was the first known grinding tool. Grain was crushed and the bakers produced what we now commonly recognize in its closest form as chapatis (India) or tortillas (Mexico).

8000 BC. At first grain was crushed by hand with pestle and mortar. In Egypt a simple grinding stone (quern) was developed. All bread was unleavened, there were no raising agents and bread was made from a mixed variety of grains.