I started baking sourdough last summer and have often wondered how humans discovered that certain plant grains could be ground into flour, mixed with water and salt, naturally fermented, and baked into bread.
It’s not something obvious when you see a field of some edible grain waving in the wind.
Yeah, some of these long-used processes are so non-intuitive and elaborate, one has to wonder, how was it figured out. Making bread is one of the most significant and important such.
The fermentation process didn’t need to be invented, so that was probably the first step. After a couple of hundred generations of everyone around the campfire going to sleep totally hammered, someone somewhere started to do some what-if.
Discover they are hard to eat.
Treat them like little nuts and roll a rock over them a few times.
Try to eat again.
Not bad but we have fire, lets toast them!
Didn't turn out the way I thought. Maybe boil them after roasting them?
Yay porridge!
Not saying that was the start but maybe.