Bread

Bread is a food item available in Indev (added on February 6, 2010), Infdev, Alpha, and Beta.

Use
Since the introduction of tall grass, Bread is arguably one of the easiest foods to obtain. By building farms out into open water, Wheat production can be started on Day 1 with no other tools than a Wooden Hoe. With a little luck at night, Bone Meal will ensure you have your first loaf before dawn. Bread has the advantage of not requiring a furnace or fuel, although lighting the farm up to the required light level of 9 for constant crop growth will consume some amount of coal or charcoal.

Wheat farming suffers from very low density. A single application of bonemeal produces only a single wheat - several tens of times less efficient than using that bonemeal on a mushroom. Wheat otherwise grows slowly and it takes a fairly large cultivated area to support sufficient food. Extensive planning is required to prevent damaging tilled earth and having to sneak across to replant crops.

Nevertheless, once operations are underway, a very large farm can eventually be built up that provides a constant, reliable, safe and renewable supply of wheat and food security. With the addition of either piston or water-based automated harvesters, wheat production becomes much less labor-intensive. Due to the exhaustion effect of breaking a block, including wheat, as well as moving, mechanical assistance contributes directly to the effective amount of energy obtained from wheat. Being now stackable, safely obtainable and with a healing value of and Food Saturation of 6, bread is superior to all unprocessed foods and an all-around good choice for most situations.

Trivia

 * Bread once required 6 wheat (arranged in a 2x3 rectangle) to be crafted.
 * Bread was once stackable to 64 loaves per square. This functionality was restored with the advent of Hunger in 1.8.
 * Bread can be found as a reward in chests in dungeons and in a mineshaft.