It seems like bonding wheat (or other grains) into an edible staple requires little more than ground-up wheat and water. Yet, the many variations of bread (leavened, unleavened, loaves, naan, flour tortillas, heck even crackers, I guess) use an assortment of ingredients, like salt, honey, eggs, spices, etc., and, most importantly to my train of thought: yeast. I'm unsure of how or when yeast even made its way into someone's mind as a feasible ingredient, but were I dropped into an early agricultural civilization, I doubt that I'd be able to revolutionize their cultural cuisine very much if all I had was my own knowledge of how to prepare basic foods without a supermarket and the global web at my fingertips. And, while my personal frame of reference lies with Europe's history with wheat, I have, by no means, sole interest in that lone grain, but for me it's synonymous with early civilization and baking.

Specifically, what I'm curious about is: What was the path that brought humankind from grain crops (including whether to cultivate them or not) to our modern concept of bread?

For example, in the documentary "What's with Wheat?" on Netflix (U.S.), one person interviewed mentioned that before yeast we used a "souring process [??]" that essentially fermented the bread and took days, whereas now it only takes a few hours to make a loaf and bag it in a factory. Whether you have huge, sweeping timelines or just small details like this, I'd be fascinated to hear more about the history of bread, as it strikes me as a real source of human ingenuity, in a staple we take for granted.

(If anyone else is interested in old, old, old school baking/ cooking, I've been really into the subreddit /r/ArchaicCooking lately. To the mods: If a plug isn't allowed, and I couldn't see anything stating as such in the rules, then please let me know and I'll delete this part. I'm in no way affiliated with that subreddit, I just like it (like this one!) and wish there were more resources like it.)

Thanks!