Loaves of Fun

73,000 B.C. ASIABread began as a lumpy, oatmeal-like substance. It was a crude mixture of ground grain and water, two things that were readily available in any part of the world at any time of the year.This mixture wasn't really bread, and wouldn't become so until people started baking it between 4000 and 2000 B.C. But this oatmealy mush is important because it shows that as long as 75,000 years ago, the people of Asia had put together the two most basic ingredients of bread—mushed grain and water. Archaeologists have found flattened stones that were clearly made to crush grain and have been able to date those stone tools back to 73,000 B.C.8000 B.C.ASIABy 8000 B.C. (about 10,000 years ago)people were mixing crushed grain
with water and heating it over a fire, which is a lot like modern oatmeal or porridge. Some ancient grains and seeds, still blackened from fires long ago, that got cooked but never eaten have been found by scientists.4000 B.C.MESOPOTAMIAIn ancient Mesopotamia, an area in Asia between the Tigris
River and the lower Euphrates River, people lived in the
pockets of the Armenian mountain range. This was the earliest civilization, and tools, remains of small homes, and human bones have been found and dated back 6,000 years. The Mesopotamians were the first to try growing and eating different kinds of grains mixed with water which they baked or boiled over a fire.2000 B.C. SWITZERLANDIn Switzerland, people known as "lake dwellers" left the remains of a village near Geneva. Archaeologists have found
bread among the tools and the remains of dwellings. They've also found grains from several different kinds of wheat. This is important because it is the earliest record of bread in Europe, a place now famous for its
many different varieties of bread.HOW CAVEMEN COOKEDT Vhe first cooks were prehistoric people. They didn't have really good hunting, cooking, or food storing methods, and
fire was a big discovery. Cooking directly over an open fire was about as advanced as their cooking technology got, but boy, was that fire important!
Prehistoric people would put chunks of meat on a stick and hold it directly in the flames. For bread, they mixed grain and water to make a mush that they cooked on rocks heated in the fire.As time passed and civilizations became more advanced, people eventually learned to make very basic ovens in which to cook their bread. The early Romans really took this idea seriously, and practically everyone in ancient Rome had an oven of some sort.After that, ovens didn't change very much
until the invention of the electric oven in the early 1900s. Until then, ovens were all boxes(of various sizes and made out of various things) that were heated by fire.Drop BiscuitsHERE'S WHAT YOU'LL NEED2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons (a/2 stick) butter, softened, plus extra for greasing

3/4 cup...