I'm a kind of "how did early individuals come up with an idea" kind of person. Bread. Who put together harvesting wild grains crushing or grinding the seeds or grains, adding water, and baking the results? If they started out just toasting the dough over coals who accidentally used a hot rock and discovered that bread without added charcoal tasted better.
The Nile valley has evidence of mortars and pestles used nearly seventeen thousand years ago. Probably used to grind barley and early forms of wheat.
The Egyptians may have invented the oven. Where did someone get the idea? Beats baking your dough on a hot rock. Records show evidence of thirty varieties of bread, usually some form of a round loaf. Bread even accompanied the dead into the afterlife. A tomb opened in 1936 had loaves over three thousand years old.
The Romans may have produced more than sixty varieties and bread was so basic the word was used to mean food of any kind.
Mosaic showing a Roman wood fired oven. Fire below, oven above. Some ovens use the fire in the oven and move the coals aside to bake. Usually have to turn the loaves to avoid overbaking or scorching.
For centuries you dipped pieces of bread into a common pot or used a chunk of bread as a plate and ate the "plate" afterwards. A loaf you could slice like we do now is relatively new. If you wanted thin bread you baked thin bread.
Bread still comes in all shapes. Flat, thin, round (with or without a hole in the middle) short, long. Made with wheat, rye, barley or other grains and seeds. Leavened or unleavened. And how did somebody discover yeasts in the first place?
Source The Book of Bread by Judith and Evan Jones.
