Definition of Unleavened Bread
Unleavened bread was almost certainly the first type of bread ever made. It contains no ingredients to make it rise, so most types of unleavened bread are flat breads. Many cultures have produced distinctive versions of it. Does this Spark an idea?
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Definition
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Unleavened bread contains no leavening agents, such as yeast, baking powder or baking soda, to make it rise. Such breads are among the simplest breads to make, often being composed of only water, flour and salt.
History
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According to the New Zealand Baking Research Trust, the earliest breads baked were unleavened flatbreads. Only people who lived in settled societies baked bread, since making it required raising grains, harvesting them and grinding them into flour.
Archaeological evidence, including ancient ovens, proves conclusively that people baked bread as early as 4,000 B.C., in Babylon, in the valley of the Euphrates River in present-day Iraq. The practice appears to have spread to Egypt by about 3,000 B.C., where inscriptions in tombs record the baking of bread. In South America, the Mayans ground corn, mixed the resulting flour with water and baked the mixture into unleavened tortillas.
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Contemporary Examples
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Unleavened breads are still important staples in the diets of many people worldwide. Examples include the chapatis of India, bammy from Jamaica (made with cassava root flour), and flatkaka, a rye flatbread made in Iceland.
Unleavened Bread in Jewish Religious Practices
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The unleavened bread called matza plays a prominent role in the celebration of the Jewish Feast of Unleavened Bread, or Passover. Observant Jews serve unleavened bread at this feast in remembrance of God's instructions to the Israelites when they were delivered from bondage in Egypt. According to Exodus 12, God told the Israelites to prepare a meal of roast lamb, bitter herbs and unleavened bread, to be eaten with "your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste." The implication is that their deliverance from Egypt would be so swift that they would not have time to wait for leavened bread to rise.
An Alternate Interpretation
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Writing for the Jewish Daily Forward, David Kraemer suggests another reason for the prohibition against leavened bread in the Passover feast. "Significantly, food historians are of the opinion that leavened bread originated in Egypt, probably less than a millennium before the pyramids were built. Egyptian culture was the first to produce leavened bread, and leavened bread was a symbol of Egyptian culture." Thus, "The Torah, by commanding the elimination of leavening, was demanding that Egyptian culture be left behind."
Unleavened Bread in Christian Religious Practices
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Many Christian churches also use unleavened bread in their celebrations of the Eucharist, because they believe that the Eucharist grew out of Christ's celebration of Passover on the night before he was betrayed and crucified. Some eastern churches, including the Eastern Orthodox Church, however, use leavened bread in their Eucharist celebrations.
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