Why Has Bread Always Looked Like Bread?

Thanksgiving week: kitchen science you can actually use. Bread looks ancient because the material problem is ancient. — Chapters 0:00 Shubayqa, About 12,400 BCE 0:53 The Problem With "Always", and What Counts as Bread 2:50 Bread Before Farming, and the Dough It Became 4:47 Rounds, Heat, and Thickness 6:41 Grain, Gluten, and Gas 8:33 Fermentation Before Microbiology 10:16 Ovens and Molds 11:52 The Portion Becomes a Unit 13:02 Why Bread Survives in Archaeology 14:43 Two Modern Myths, and Why Familiarity Is So Powerful 16:48 The Answer — Constraint, Not Tradition 17:47 Final Reframe — A Handprint You Can Eat — A new episode every week. This channel takes one ordinary thing and follows it until it stops being ordinary. If you spotted an error, say so in the comments. Corrections get pinned. — Credits Ancient Egyptian bread from Deir el-Bahri (loaf 36.3.73, bread fragments 20.3.265-268): The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Open Access (CC0) A Neolithic Saddle Quern and Upper Stone (FindID 1016166) (cropped): Birmingham Museums Trust, Susheela Burford, 2020-12-07 16:33:11, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Neolithic_Saddle_Quern_and_Upper_Stone_(FindID_1016166).jpg Active sourdough starter (cropped): spurekar, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Active_sourdough_starter_(49883187806).jpg Baker woman's hands kneading bread dough (cropped): Shixart1985, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baker_woman%27s_hands_kneading_bread_dough.jpg Images (cropped): Tyson Dudley 2016 (Unsplash) (Tyson Dudley ty_dudley); Bread at Turkish restaurant in Tokyo (Syced); Flore de la Pointe du Grouin - Seigle (Renhour48); Bowl with bread loaves and persea twigs, baked clay, vegetable fibers - Museo Egizio, Tur