People can grow vegetables and simply eat. But bread is way too complicated.
There is a bakers’ dozen of big steps to go from wheat into bread. And multiple special structures needed too.
Same with beer. Wine makes total sense but how do you even invent ale? How are these common foods everyone knows and uses?
I was thinking “imagine if mediveal people knew how to boil seawater and sell salt” and now I spent 20 extra minutes in the shower.
The first step with bread is grinding the corn. This a basic way to make it edible for the tribe. Have you ever tried to bite on a corn of wheat or rye?
Mix it with water and cook it to make it softer, and you get a kind of porrige. Leave it warm over night, and you have a sourdough. Rekindle the fire on the next day, and you’ll have a proto bread.
From there to the white bread made with a dozen chemical stabilizers, acid regulators and raising agents as they are sold in the supermarket is just the result of refining the process.
Or there’s just, you know normal bread, flour, water, yeast and salt. You don’t need all that extra crap.
Of course nobody needs it. But >99% only know it that way.
I highly doubt that. Being from a European country, a bakery around the corner with fresh bread is the most normal thing. Supermarket bread is highly frowned upon here and definitely not something most people would ever buy. As is the case in most of the world (either by baking themselves or going to the bakery) - except of course the USA I presume
If you believe that your local bakery can survive without those chemicals, think again. There are a handful of specialized bakeries that actually work on “clean” recipies, but they are rare and much more expensive.
Yes, even in Germany, the country of bread, rising agents and acidity regulators are common. Whenever you see a “bakery” put prepared rolls into the oven, you can be sure that chemistry is the bakers best friend.
You think the rest of the planet is like the US. It actually isn’t. It’s more like 4% know it that way.