Bread, the food of all

Homer, in the Odyssey, defines human beings in a very simple and practical way: they are “eaters of wheat and bread”. Almost three thousand years have passed since these words were written and a lot of water has passed under the bridge, but have we men and women of the 21st century really distanced ourselves so much from the Homeric definition? The answer to this question can be found in Gabriele Rosso's beautiful essay “History of Bread” (il Saggiatore, 2024, pp. 184, also e-book) in which the author guides us on a journey into the history and evolution of this primordial food , to discover myths and innovations, political changes and economic transformations linked to the food that more than any other has influenced the development of society.

White, black, leavened, unleavened, baked, industrial, fresh, long-life, bread has kept us company yesterday as it does today. Retracing its history, especially that most distant from us, means getting on a real time machine. In ancient Mesopotamia, for example, bread was usually not leavened, but sometimes soured dough or brewer's yeast was added as leaven. The dough made of flour, water and salt was cooked either on a stone surface placed directly on the fire, or on a plate placed in a clay oven, or by making the dough stick to the ceramic wall of an oven. Bread was produced at home by the women of the family, but in temples or palaces there were real laboratories and many varieties of bread were already being produced: "honey bread", "sesame bread", "cheese bread", "chickpea bread", "sweet bread" etc.

For more elaborate breads, sweeteners (honey and figs) and aromatic substances (sesame or cumin) were added to the dough. Only rarely is wheat bread mentioned, mostly in the northern areas of Mesopotamia.

The Egyptians were famous for their bread : the flour obtained from the abundant harvests along the Nile was mixed with water and leavened by adding, usually, the residues of soured dough from the previous days, or brewer's yeast. In more ancient times, bread was cooked on red-hot stone slabs; starting from the New Kingdom, ovens in the shape of a truncated cone were introduced, made of terracotta and unbaked bricks, similar to those still used today in southern Egypt.

We know that there were at least 40 types of bread, depending on the flour used and the ingredients added (dates, honey, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, etc.). Another characteristic of Egyptian bread was its shape: in fact, conical, circular, semi-circular, triangular, ring-shaped loaves have been found in tombs, but also in the shape of animals or dolls! In Greece, 65 types of bread were known: made from wheat flour, rye flour, barley flour and many others, kneaded with milk or honey and often enriched with sesame or cumin seeds. Bread was certainly the main food in every home: on the most modest tables there could be the kódraton, that is, the loaf divided into eight wedges with four cuts, while the more refined one was the boletínos, a mushroom-shaped bread sprinkled with poppy seeds. We also know that honey cakes were offered to the gods. Roman bread was known for its hardness; the yeast used, with grape must or bread dough, was prepared once a year, at grape harvest time. However, there were many types depending on the different doughs, cooking methods and uses: bread made from soft wheat flour, bread with a coarser and poorer sifting, so-called wholemeal bread, biscuits, which kept longer and were therefore intended for soldiers, and even bread intended for dogs! Less common was a type of bread that was softer, spongier and able to absorb a greater quantity of water. In addition to the type of cereal or the quantity of yeast, it was the dough that made the difference: legumes, chestnuts and acorns gave flavour to the humblest bread, while the more refined breads were enriched with spices, milk, eggs or honey.

In short, people already indulged in bread in ancient times , also because this food represented not only a fundamental nourishment but also and above all a symbol that defined the human being and shaped his imagination. We started, not by chance, with Homer, but we could cite the God of the New Testament who becomes "living bread, descended from heaven" or the daily bread present on medieval tables and the attacks on bakeries during famines in the following centuries. We can then continue with the creation of supermarket Wonder Bread, with the disappearance of quality in favor of mass production, up to the recent rediscovery of the figure of the baker and high-level artisanal bread making.

History of Bread traces the many technical and value changes that have led this food to become a commodity capable of playing a role even in geopolitical scenarios: just think of the importance assumed by wheat in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. In short, bread is a food-mirror of ourselves, in which for thousands of years we have seen the reflection of our actions, our fears and our hopes. As it is written in the biblical book of Qohelet: "Cast your bread on the waters, because in time you will find it. Divide it into seven or eight parts, because you do not know what disaster may happen on earth".