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From the beginning of life on our planet, people ate the cereal fruits raw, later they learned to roast them.

In ancient Egypt, 8000 to 10000 years before Christ, with the rise of civilization, bread began to be prepared.

The first flour had no resemblance to today’s flour. It was flour made from roasted or dried seeds that had been ground or pounded between two smooth rolling pins. Later, they learned to mix this primitive flour with water and prepare the first porridges that are the real ancestors of today’s bread.

They then learned to make thicker porridges, which they cooked directly on the fire or spread in red-hot stones. The first utensils used were clay pans.

In Greece, the cultivation of land and grain appears in the seventh millennium BC. Digging, sowing and other agricultural work is done with improvised wooden tools. Next appears the plow which is first dragged by man and then by some animal. Impressive are the prehistoric representations of agricultural tools. A plow of that era does not differ much from a traditional 19th century Thessalian counterpart. Wheat has been cultivated since ancient times, mainly in the Thessalian plain, the so-called granary of Greece. In 450 BC. the watermill was invented in Greece. The changes came in the 20th century, with the refinement of the tools in terms of their technique, but in essence they are not much different from those of old.

During the Middle Ages and with the increase in population of towns and cities there was a steady increase in trade and bakers slowly began to establish businesses and then guilds to protect the interests of their members but also to regulate price and weight of the bread.

During the twentieth century gas and oil furnaces replaced those of wood and coal. In 1912 Otto Rohwedder began work on a machine that slices bread and then wraps and dehumidifies it. This machine was exhibited at an exhibition of bakers in America in 1928.

In the 1940s calcium was added to flour to prevent rickets, a disease that occurred in women going into the army while in 1942 London bakers joined regional organizations to form the Bakers’ Federation to help organize the wartime production and distribution of bread.

Bread is a basic type of food with a special nutritional value. It belongs to the traditional diet intertwined with life itself. Basic food of the Greeks, it was identified with the sufficiency of goods and its lack with hunger. It was never missing from the Greek traditional table during the great holidays and the great moments of Greek life. It was associated with customs, prejudices and beliefs

source : Federation of Bakers of Greece