The Journey Begins: Caveman bread

 ~16,420 B.C.

Caveman Bread- 3 ways

1 Yucca Root, peeled

1 1/2 c Whole Wheat Flour

1c Wheat bran

1c water

Bread 1- Grate the peeled Yucca into a bowl on the finest side of your box grater. This should create a white paste resembling canned chicken salad. Take a bottle to further mush the Yucca into a paste. This can also be done with a mortar and pestle if you have one. Heat up a lightly oiled caste iron skillet on medium heat and shape the Yucca paste into thin patties. (If you want to make Bread 2, only use half of the Yucca paste) Cook these patties for 4-6 minutes, flipping half way through, until desired brownness. Makes 2 small patties

Bread 2- Mix Whole Wheat floor and Wheat Bran together until homogenous. Use the remainder of the Yucca paste and mix in the wheat mixture, a spoonful at a time, until a dough begins to form. Shape this dough into thin patties and cook in the same lightly oil caste iron skillet as Bread 1 until brown on both sides. This should take around 1-2 minutes. (If you are only cooking Bread 2 this may take longer, 4-6 minutes approx.) Makes 2 small patties

Bread 3- Take the remaining wheat mixture and drizzle in about a cup of water, while mixing until a dough begins to form. Once the dough forms kneed a few times in the bowl with your hands. Form into thin patties and cook 4-5 minutes in the same lightly oiled caste iron skillet as Breads 1 and 2.

*****

"Approximately 14,400 years ago, a baker in current-day Jordan burnt a round of unleavened bread. In 2018, it was found—charred and initially unidentifiable—in an ancient fireplace in the Black Desert. Up until this moment, bread consumption was thought to have started much later, after the advent of grain farming around 10,000 years ago. However, this discovery suggested hunter-gatherers were making bread long before they settled around arable farms. In short, it shook up accepted notions of just how long bread has been in our lives." (Boyd, Porter, and Seal 2020)

Bread is a funny thing, it comforts us, gives us a sense of accomplishment and, most importantly, provides us with nutrients to continue to make more bread. Although we don't know a whole lot about the bread that was discovered in Jordan, we can make some educated guesses as to what this first bread would have been like.

Logic would suggest that during nomadic times, our ancestors would not have been able to let bread sit long enough for fermentation to occur. It would also suggest that their foraging skills would have produced root vegetables. These roots would have likely been ground into mush, possibly mixed with other ground plants and cooked on a hot rock in/on the fire. For this first bread experiment, I am really winging it and calling upon all of my arm chair expertise and channeling every youtube/TV chief I have ever seen.

The first thing I needed to find was an appropriate root. With the cradle of civilization being the Mediterranean I tried to find some roots plants from that area... however, with the selection in my local grocery stores I had to settle for a Yucca root. This root is actually from South
America, but it's as close as I was going to get. Also, I would venture to guess that our ancestors would have thrown in some other ground plants into their bread, if not out of curiosity, than for the convince of having two foods in one dish, much like we put meat in our mac and cheese today. I tried to simulate these ground plants with Wheat Bran and Whole Wheat flour.

So with my ingredients selected and the ghosts of cooking shows past assembled, I began my bread journey.

First, the Yucca root has a very waxy and thick skin, so I decided to peel that off with a vegetable peeler. Now, would our ancestors have peeled off the skin, probably not, but I decided that I didn't want to eat waxy skin today, so I took it off. After peeling, I busted out the box grater and settled on the finest side of the grater since the root probably would have been ground against a rock to make the hard root easier to eat. I then decided for the sake of authenticity to mush it up further with my improvised mortar and pestle made out of a bowl and a wide bottom hot sauce bottle.

I was kind of weirded out when I discovered that Yucca paste looks a lot like canned chicken. I even exclaimed out loud, "It looks like I'm making chicken salad!" ...odd

With the question of what is actually in canned chicken rattling around in my head, I soldiered on. Heating up the caste iron skillet and forming my ... Yucca paste into thin patties, They browned up rather nicely. I got 2 patties a couple of inches across out of half of my Yucca paste. You can really leave this in the skillet as long as you like. One of mine was darker than the other because I wanted to see how dark I could get them without burning. The longer one was about 6 minutes.

I then took my mixture of 1 1/2 cups of Whole Wheat Flour and 1 cup of Wheat Bran and spooned about 2 spoonfuls into the remaining Yucca Paste. I then mixed it together to form a dough. I repeated the forming and cooking of these patties. These cooked up really quickly, probably in part because my skillet was already at the correct temp.

My third bread really came in the moment. I realized that I had dished out way too much flour and Bran so I decided that I was going to add some water and make bread out of that too. Waste not, want not, ya know?

I slowly added about a cup of water to the wheat mixture until a dough started to form. then kneading the dough just a few times before making the same patties and cooking them in the same way. These where harder to tell when they where done just because they where already pretty brown when I put them in the pan. When I knocked on them and they sounded hollow, according to The Great British Bake Off, that means they are done.

Tasting was very interesting, in that I had very low expectations of all of these breads but some of them really surprised me! Bread 1, which was just Yucca paste tasted like a hash brown! My husband tried one and added salt and it was very good! Bread 2 was... very underwhelming, just ehh. Bread 3 was obviously the closest to modern bread which made it fine. It was very dense which is to be expected and in thinking about being out in the wilderness with only this bread, it would not be unwelcome at my camp fire.

All in all I would say the breads where a success. Accounting for a few modern pieces of equipment and cooking inside, I would say that I got as close as I could get to what our nomadic ancestors would have had around 14,420 years ago.

<- Bread 1 is top left, Bread 2 is top right and bread 3 is on the bottom.