Apropos to nothing, for some strange reason the other day I got to thinking... the only cultures that don’t seem to have a native bread are the Japanese/Chinese, and perhaps Pacific Islanders. I know they have rice and noodles, but bread would pre-date that by a lot (I think?) Bread doesn’t have to be wheat-based, so why is that? Or am I just totally off?
No clue there at all.
Yes, you are totally off.
Before Europeans went everywhere, most places didn’t eat bread. No bread in South America. Corn cakes in Central and North America up to the cold line, Africa had few places with bread south of the Sahara. Ethiopia has a flatbread made of the local grain and there were similar ones west of there made of millet. The rice cultures generally didn’t have bread, except steamed ground rice flour. The northern peoples had flatbread made of ground barley and buckwheat. Grinding grain is hard, and hard on the teeth, too.
Rice culture is easy, the grain is edible if just boiled, and it provides lots of calories. Therefore, no need to develop a complicated system of milling just to eat. It is much older than bread.
I grew up in the 2nd most populous country on earth and never ate bread. Bread as we know it in US was rarity and expensive. We ate something similar to Mexican tortilla’s made from whole wheat flour and cooked on a hot iron skillet. No yeast in it at all to make it porous. Just water and a bit of peanut oil.