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 Although people have been making bread for hundreds of years. During the late Stone Age, nomadic tribes probably made a thick gruel from wild grain and baked it into flat cakes on hot stones in their campfires. The nomadic tribes settled and began cultivating grains, among them einkorn and emmer, the ancestors of modern domestic wheat. Around 6000 BC Swiss lake dwellers improved on the wild grain-gruel recipe by crushing grains to make a flatbread. Archaeological evidence suggests that yeast-risen wheat breads were developed in Egypt around 4000 years ago. The Egyptians are also believed to be the first to grind wheat flour in a process analogous to modern milling.
Technical advances continued to improve bread-making techniques, among them the use of the yeast-containing residue of the brewing process as a leavening agent. Bread bakers no longer had to rely on wild airborne yeast or sour dough starters, and by the 3rd century BC, yeast was manufactured commercially in Egypt.
Greeks who colonized the Mediterranean were avid bakers. They refined flours to eliminate the impurities; seasoned their breads and cakes with honey, sesame, and fruits; and invented a stone oven for baking bread. By the 2nd century ad Roman bakeries produced several different kinds of bread, and the Romans introduced their bread to all the lands they conquered.
During the early half of the Middle Ages, around the 5th century to the 10th century, political conditions caused trade between countries to decline. Wheat crops, grown in warm, dry climates, became less available to bakers in the cool, damp countries of northern Europe. Northern bakers perfected rye, oat, and barley breads, and a tradition of dark, hearty bread making persists in some regions of northern Europe today.
Colonial Americans made bread from cornmeal at home, baking it in the fireplace hearth. Wheat for bread became available as American settlers migrated westward to the plains—regions with climates suitable for wheat farming—and established cooperative mills for grinding grain. Railroads made grain and flour distribution efficient and cost-effective. Bread makers had to make their own yeast or rely on old dough starters for leavening until 1868, when prepared packaged yeast was made available for sale to the public.
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