I hope that the game adds porridge or gruel at some point.
Both were popular food, especially among the poor. It was simple to make and didn’t require as much processing or cooking time as bread. It is just crushed grain and boiled water (in its simplest form).
Right now, we don’t have any way other than bread to feed people grain (there’s beer, but it doesn’t count as food). Porridge could be a simpler and faster way to turn grain into food, and available at T2.
Now the grain used for porridge was typically milled, but not as fine as flour. This could certainly be done using a hand mill with slower production than a full mill. This could be handled a couple ways.
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A separate and new building that produces porridge using grain + firewood + water.
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A precursor to the Bakery building, available at T2, and upgradeable to the Bakery at T3. Produces porridge with grain + firewood + water. When the bakery is upgraded, it can still produce porridge using a production slider to determine the amount.
After having a bakery, the advantage to porridge is that could be produced faster and cheaper than bread (not needing to mill to flour, not taking as long to cook), so there would need to be a balance to make it worth it to make bread, perhaps as it’s a more “luxury” food like cheese.