It is also a staple food produced from flour made from wheat, but there is a certain difference between China and the West. In China, steamed steamed buns were born, while in the West, baked bread was born. What is the magical difference between the two? Why didn't ancient China breed toast? [Beer]
1
The "origin" of bread
If we want to explore the question of why bread was not bred in ancient China, we have to start with the birth of bread. Although the exact origin is still debated. However, most opinions still agree with the ancient Egyptian origin, that is, around 3,000 B.C., a clever ancient Egyptian had the whimsical idea to grind the wheat grains that were distributed to him into flour, add water to ferment, and then bake them over a fire.
This unique fluffy and slightly tough taste is something they have never experienced before, to which they said: Oh, it is so fragrant! This can be said to be a change in food culture in the history of mankind, and then the ships of merchants spread the technology of making wheat and bread in Egypt.
Through cultural exchange, gradually throughout the Mediterranean region, the bread diet began to dominate people's stomachs. In this regard, in the records of ancient Greece, it was clearly stated that the Greek nation was a people who ate bread, and therefore a civilized nation. This gives rise to the argument that at that time, those who did not eat bread in the eyes of the ancient Greeks could be classified as barbarians.
We Chinese certainly don't like to hear this, because we were already a civilized and civilized nation at that time. You have Socrates, Plato, and Aleistotle, and we have Confucius, Zhuangzi, and Mozi. But we don't eat bread, of course, not eating bread does not mean that there is no wheat, in fact, in the pre-Qin era in China has long been cultivated wheat, wheat is one of the traditional grains in the mainland, which can be proved from the carbonized wheat grains unearthed on the ruins of the Zhou Dynasty.
2
The development of wheat in China
However, at that time, our ancestors did rarely eat wheat, which was determined by the eating habits of the Chinese at that time, when the way to eat grains was "wheat rice" rather than grinding into flour for secondary processing, wheat rice can be understood as the intermediate product of rice and thick porridge now, and wheat because the surface bran is too thick and hard, the taste of making wheat rice is not good.
In a word, in the pre-Qin era, the Chinese should have never seen flour. There was no flour, and there was no way to talk about leavened bread, and at that time, the big brother of the Chinese staple food was millet. China really ushered in the era of pasta, and also got the Western Han Dynasty, that Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty wanted Confucianism to respect Confucianism, and proposed to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to widely plant winter wheat in the Guanzhong area, so as to sow more crops in the winter and not waste the land.
Wheat cultivation required adequate irrigation and was already available in those days. The government of the Qin and Han dynasties can be said to attach great importance to water conservancy construction, and the development of irrigated agriculture was impressive. Dong Zhongshu, a big thinker, is indeed correct in terms of economic considerations, of course, this may also be because he himself is a big foodie.
Because of his time, China already had stone grinding technology, and the Chinese also clicked on wheat cooking technology. That is, the classic noodle soup and the traditional noodle dish, which he has been living in since the time he lived, must have been unforgettable to him. And during this period, people at that time had already mastered the technology of fermenting dough through yeast, and the preconditions for bread technology had actually been completed.
However, the Chinese at that time did not make bread, but another food, that is, steamed buns and a series of foods derived from it. For example, in the Song Dynasty, Gao Chun's "Records of Affairs" said that steamed buns were invented by Zhuge Liang, but in fact, they were meat stuffed buns, which were steamed with various meats wrapped in dough, and today's Shanghainese people still call steamed buns.
However, in addition to Shanghai, the steamed bread that is really commonly recognized by people today in China has actually appeared as early as the end of the Western Han Dynasty after the invention of the fermentation method, but at that time people called it "cake", because there were still many problems in the fermentation technology at that time. So the question is, from the Han to the Song Dynasty, and even in the later Ming and Qing dynasties, why did the Chinese make steamed buns instead of making bread?
3
The difference that comes with cooking tools
It has been suggested that Westerners are mostly descendants of nomadic people, and because they often need to move to live, they take the easiest way to cook. Baking food directly on the fire is arguably the most convenient way for humans, but this reason is still a bit far-fetched, because the ancient Egyptians who invented bread were a proper farming people.
It was even the granary of the ancient Romans, and baking bread was not an easy task, as you can see if you look at the bread ovens that have survived in ancient Rome to this day, and these ovens must be built with great skill by bakers. In ancient Rome, the status of bakers was quite high. There are even historical records of bakers being elected consuls during the Roman Republic.
Therefore, it is not right to deliberately use this so-called plausible national culture to be deliberately far-fetched. Although this statement is extremely unreliable, it also makes a lot of sense to mention that the absence of bread in ancient China has a lot to do with the differences in cooking methods.
Bread is baked with fire, but barbecue is not the mainstream in the Chinese cooking method, especially with the advancement of civilization, the real mainstream is steaming and boiling after the Song Dynasty and stir-frying. And when we look at the bronze utensils of the pre-Qin period, in addition to weapons and ornaments, most of them are cooking utensils. For example, the tripod, an item with a unique status, was originally used to cook things.
Later, steaming was an important technological point, by creating "eyes" on the utensils, so that the steam circulated from the bottom to the top, and the water vapor was used to cook the food. Such a unique technology began to be popularized in the Central Plains early on, and the common people also used these skills, although they could not afford to use copper and iron, but they could use pottery and bamboo. Today, in the civilian tombs of the pre-Qin, Qin and Han dynasties, this simple pottery abounds.
It is precisely because such a unique technology was pointed out early that everyone naturally looked down on the primitive and rough bread baking technology, but turned to the unique pastry technology. For example, the processing technology of steamed buns, steamed buns, flower rolls, etc., which we often eat now, and the steamer is more fuel-efficient and easy to control the heat than the bread oven, so naturally there is little motivation to develop bread oven technology.
4
The introduction of bread and the development and change in the country
It is precisely because of this that bread was really introduced to the mainland and began to be popularized and developed after the outbreak of the Opium War. At that time, the Western powers opened the door to China, and the opening of the coastal commercial ports also attracted the Western way of life. At that time, many wealthy Chinese people also liked this Western food, of course, not so much because they liked the taste of bread, but because they wanted to be fresh.
Moreover, bread at that time has undergone a long period of medieval and industrial improvement, and has already undergone an important transformation from the original form of walnuts, with many oils and polysaccharides beautifully decorated, in fact, closer to the form of pastries in our culture. It is precisely because of this that bakeries have gradually increased in coastal cities, and there are a variety of bread patterns.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, the import of foreign high-gluten flour has always been a large trade, because they are used to make Western-style bread and snacks, in the various concessions of Shanghai at that time, as long as you have money, you can eat special bread and snacks from Britain, France, Italy and other different European countries.
For example, many high-level people in the Republic of China were learning Western-style eating habits, and many of the characters we know well in the Republic of China period liked to eat toast with jam and milk for breakfast. Behind this is not only a change in eating habits, but also an invasion of a cultural core. The unconfident "new literati" and "new aristocracy" desperately hoped that they could "flaunt" their identity and "progress" by imitating the habits and styles of Westerners.
However, at that time, the elite who could eat foreign bread every day was actually a small handful. At that time, the real bulk of the social group was still the poor peasantry. However, it was good for these peasants who depended on the sky to eat at that time to have a nest, and most of them couldn't even eat steamed buns, let alone bread.
Today, with the improvement of people's living standards and the pursuit of new things, large and small bakeries have spread all over the city. Bread has long become a daily food, but to be honest, this imported product has not had much impact on Chinese food culture and habits. After all, many Chinese people position this kind of "bread" more as "dim sum" than as a staple food.
Most of them only eat bread once in a while, or work at a fast pace, a food that can quickly satisfy hunger. Steamed buns, steamed buns, noodles, and rice are the mainstream foods that most of us commonly see in our daily lives. The "disenchantment" of Western-style diet and life has also been basically completed with the development and progress of society.
At present, those who like bread as a food have really become a choice of taste and preference, rather than making a note of themselves by flaunting a "sense of luxury" of "Western-style life". And our cuisine has also begun to gradually become popular in the world, many countries have begun to eat steamed buns and steamed buns, and the fusion of different countries' food styles has given birth to more new cuisines.
Resources:
Guangming.com - 150 years ago, Western food came-China Reading News-Guangming.com
Bright Net - Don't despise bread, its presence is warm and safe