I am trying to comprehend how something that required methodical steps and ‘good luck’ came to be a staple of civilisations for thousands of years. Thank you. (Sorry if this question isn’t correct for ELI5, I searched and couldn’t find it asked. Hope it’s in-bounds.)
In: 1505
You see birds eat grain from grasses. Maybe it’s good? You try some.
Raw wheat kernels when chewed make a kind of gum. It tastes okay and it’s clearly edible, but it’s not as easy to eat as something like fruit. Still, it’s satisfying in its own way.
While standing there in a field of mostly grain grasses when it’s ripe enough for the birds to be eating it, it’s easy to see that there is a *lot* of this stuff. So you go from picking a handful to picking a basket-full. (And hey, these grasses make good basket material too!)
It’s still hard to chew, but you get to thinking: chewing it grinds it up, and gets it wet. Maybe if you grind it between a couple stones to crack it, it’ll be easier to chew. And sure enough it helps. It leaves a kind of dust behind, but whatever, it’s a win.
Then it rains, and your millstone gets wet. When you go to grind more you see the leftover dust in it has gotten kinda gloopy now that it’s wet. Weird. You try a bit. Hey, that’s not bad.
You decide to make more, but on purpose. You grind a handful of grain and add water. Playing with your food, you fumble around with it long enough to make a kind of dough. Weird, but kinda neat. Kinda tasty too really.
Eventually you leave some out accidentally and it dries out. You come back to it and realize that even dried out the stuff is not too bad. You make some more, and put it next to the fire where you have some meat drying. Works great.
But you know… cooked meat is pretty good. What would this be like if you cooked it too? You lay it on a hot rock, and after poking it with a stick you discover it kinda holds together and comes off the cooking stone in more or less one piece and holy moly you have invented flatbread!
Achievement unlocked, you have discovered an entirely new portable food! If you knew what pajamas were, this would be the cat’s pajamas!
So anyway you keep fiddling with it to make it better, and make a lot more of it. This stuff keeps for days, and longer if you dry it really well like you do with meat.
Somewhere along the way though you get distracted while making it, or make a bunch of dough but the fire has gone out. Anyway the dough sits out a while before you cook it and it gets kinda puffed up. Smells weird, too. But you’re hungry so you cook it anyway, and find this might be even better. It’s kinda soft and fluffy inside. It doesn’t keep as well as the flatbread because it’s harder to dry out, but this is definitely good stuff even so.
And that’s how you invent bread from scratch.
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