Flatbreads like roti are popular all over the world. You’d find Mexican tortillas in Mexico, they resemble rotis a lot. Often tortillas are made of corn, while rotis are made of wheat. You’ll find many such flatbreads in Southeast Asian countries. You’ll find flatbreads in African countries as well. Who came up with the idea to put yeast in the normal flatbreads to make it expand? This is a topic of debate for historians.
It is speculated that its origin was around 4,000 BC. A baker in Egypt was making the traditional flatbread, when he kept the dough aside for some hours, There happened to be wild yeast in the air, that interacted with the dough. When the baker put the dough in his traditional oven, it started expanding. Everyone was surprised to see that. They found that it was softer to eat.
Since they liked it, they decided to try to make it again. They believed that keeping the dough out in the open for some time will result in this bread. But the presence of wild yeast in the air was simply unpredictable. Often, it wasn’t there. Then someone discovered that they could use the older dough containing yeast and keep it with the fresh dough to enable the transfer of yeast to the fresh dough. And so, steadily, humans developed the process of making breads.
