The variance in the nature of bread across cultures has always fascinated me.
From Amritsar to Amsterdam, the same pound of wheat can be baked into pieces of bread that couldn't be more different.
Bread (i.e. baked floor-dough) has played a central role in cultural diets from Northeast Asia to Western Europe.
In the first image above, you see the north Indian phulka (aka chapati /roti), an Indian flatbread nowadays made out of wheat.
Different variations of this flatbread are consumed as staple food from India to Israel.
The second image shows dutch leavened bread.
It belongs to a family of oven-baked breads that are the biggest source of carbs across European diets.
These two represent the buckets that nearly all breads can be clubbed into- flatbread and leavened bread.
Flatbread is the more ancient version of bread since it can be cooked nearly anywhere with a basic firewood setup.
Leavened bread is the more recent version and comes with improvements such as large-scale production and more shelf-life.
Why did some cultures adopt leavened bread while others stuck with flatbread?
The answer lies in two major factors that make leavened bread possible- wheat and large ovens.
The first variable is the grain itself. While bread is mostly made from wheat across the world today, that wasn't always the case.
For instance, millet has historically been the staple grain in South Asia and Northeast China. The relatively drier climate in these regions makes millets more feasible than wheat.
In the kitchen, Millet does not stretch out like wheat and cannot be leavened.
Thus leavened bread never took off and flatbread remained the staple food in North India and Northeast China.
After the Americans flooded the world with their wheat surplus, millet was simply replaced by wheat while the flatbread culture carried on.
The result of all this is that the phulka served in Amritsar dhabas is now the most consumed bread on the planet.
While wheat is the staple grain in the Middle East and Central Asia, it is the absence of large ovens that keeps the bread flat in this region.
Large ovens are critical in making leavened bread economical. While many flatbreads are cooked in ovens, these ovens tend to be smaller in structure and simpler in function.
Large ovens are reasonable to build if you a) live in a cooler climate, b) don't wander from one place to another, and c) Feed a large population.
Most people in these regions have traditionally lived in nomadic tribes (Central Asia/ Sahara) or hot climates (Fertile Crescent), both of which make large ovens infeasible.
On the other hand, large ovens are the main reason why leavened bread dominated European cuisine.
Flatbreads were once reasonably popular in rural Europe due to the limited availability of large ovens.
However, once improved metallurgy met the cold European climate, ovens suddenly became feasible.
As more Europeans started living in settlements doing specialized labor (as opposed to Central Asian or Saharan nomads), it made economical sense to have local bakeries that housed large ovens and managed bread production for the village.
The efficiency of this outsourcing basically started the decline of flatbread consumption in Europe.
Leavened bread became the center of European diets and now greets you at the entrance of every Albert Heijn store in Amsterdam.
Bread, along with rice, makes up the majority of human calorie consumption.
However, unlike rice, each variety of bread brings an interesting story about the geography and culture behind its origin, which makes for great table talk.