What is Kneading? Kneading is defined as the process of working a dough mixture to form a cohesive mass. To cut a long story short, this is the traditional process of making bread.
Bread held a prominent status in Greek diet since antiquity to the present days. It was connected with cultural, traditional and religious celebrations as the famous "Thesmoforia festival" in honor of the harvest Goddess, Demeter. Until the 5th c. B.C., bread was made of barley and spelt, cooked on charcoal. As trade relations between Greece and Egypt flourished, wheat started being imported. According to historian Herodotus, Ancient Greeks used to make more than 70 different kinds of bread. The transition from homemade production to the establishment of the first "bakeries" took place around the 2nd c. A.D. An interesting story connects the origin of the word "paximadia" - rusks to Paxamus, a man who lived in Viotia during the 1st c. A.D. Paxamos proposed a method of preserving bread for longer, by baking it twice until it became completely dry.
Bread, thanks to its cheap and common ingredients was never consider luxurious. The traditional Cretan bread is famous for its beneficial qualities which can possibly prevent gastric cancer and especially the cancer of the large intestine. What is interesting about Cretans is that they used to consume brown against white bread which was consumed more on celebrations as Christmas, Easter etc.
