Bread, muffins or other pastries are an essential component of any cuisine in the world. Moreover, the attitude towards them in most cultures is sacred, shrouded in legends and myths.

Grain is a seed. Seeds – the multicellular seed of a plant, they have a complex structure. They are found in all plants of two large groups, Holo and Angiosperms.

But why does humanity use only a small species of thousands of plants with seeds – cereals?

Why did people in completely different parts of the ancient world start baking bread from grain?

Can other types of plants be used for cooking?

grain for seed

Cereal is the seed of a plant of the blueberry family. They are called grains – Gramineae. Characteristic inflorescence – the ear of this family contains grain. One of the first to cultivate them was humanity. Cereals have become the basis of all kinds of cereals and pastries. The family includes wheat, rye, barley, oats, maize, millet, sorghum and rice.

An exception among cereals is buckwheat, because it belongs not to blueberries, but to a completely different family – Polygonaceae, which is why it is also called pseudocereal.

Sometimes grains contain legumes, but this distinguishes them from grains.

Paradoxically, but independently of each other, humanity in completely different parts of the world in ancient times chose only different members of one group – cereals.

Some grew wild in northern regions – rye and barley, for example. Others lived in the south. Rice and oats required high humidity and others had adequate steppe conditions with sparse rainfall.

But despite all the differences in cultivation and appearance at the beginning of the history of ancient civilization, people began to eat the cereal grains of one family.

Why?

solid benefits

In principle, a person can eat many other seeds, if they do not contain harmful components.

And if desired, bread can be baked using alternative products such as cassava, potatoes, pumpkin, sunflower and others. The main condition is that the seeds contain starch and protein.

But grains are superior to many crops in many aspects.

First, they contain gluten. It is based on specific prolamine proteins containing the amino acid proline.

For this reason, long fibers are formed in cereal flour when mixed with water. When baked, they form a kind of support grid – and the bread will be lush and airy.

The second reason is productivity. With sufficient unpretentiousness and a larger grain size compared to cereals, it gives one of the highest reproductive coefficients among seeds – from 1 to 20.