Why did wheat consumption of East Asia take the form of noodles and steamed bread, while in west Asia and Europe it was consumed as baked bread?

Question

Why did wheat consumption of East Asia take the form of noodles and steamed bread, while in west Asia and Europe it was consumed as baked bread?

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Answer 1

Making noodles or steamed bread requires a mill, which is the most basic infrastructure necessary for people to use grains as a food source, plus a pot, which is the most basic household good necessary for people to eat hot meals.

Baked bread, on the other hand, requires an oven. In pre-industrial societies, an oven was an unimaginable expense that was far beyond the reach of a peasant. Even for those who could afford an oven, having an oven in your house was a terrible idea because of the fire danger that they posed.

The high cost and danger of ovens meant that any building housing an oven had to be built for that specific purpose *and* had to be built far enough away from everything else that a fire wouldn’t spread.

Due to those issues, the Greeks and Romans viewed ovens as a sign of civilization – during antiquity it took a large civic investment to create and maintain a communal bakery, which was something that only the Greeks/Romans had the political sophistication to do.

That Greek/Roman tradition of building communal ovens continued all the way to the early industrial era in Europe, which had a side effect of creating the types of well organized local governments that were necessary to support communal ovens.

Pre-Industrial East Asian countries tended to have sophisticated national governments. That being said, local governments in the region didn’t look anything like they did in Europe to the point that it is fair to say that local government in East Asia did not exist. Without the strong, well organized local governments that are necessary to support large, communal investments, ovens were virtually non-existent in East Asia. Without ovens it isn’t possible to make bread.

And because this is reddit: yes, there are plenty of youtube channels that show you how to make small clay ovens to make bread. Those ovens are great for cooking a single loaf of bread that you would never want to eat (even if you were a midieval peasant). Those ovens are also often single use and, even when they can be used more than once, aren’t practical for making bread in sufficient quality or quantity to survive off of.