‘OUR DAILY BREAD’: HISTORY... AND STORIES

Bread is one of the most popular wheat-based foods, often considered the essence of human civilization thanks to its significance that extends beyond simple nutrition. Often called ‘the staff of life’, it is part of the world heritage as all peoples on the earth have developed specific bread-centred myths, symbols and rituals. The importance of this essential aliment is reflected in its wide variety of shapes, flavours and recipes created over 10,000 years of existence, which acknowledges bread-making as a way to retrace the lost connection with Mother Earth and provides the simple enterprise with a mythical status. The metaphysical connotation of the common food has been extensively illustrated in universal literature, from the Bible to such renowned poets as Omar Khayyam, Kahlil Gibran and Dylan Thomas, and further on to contemporary writers like Anna Adams, Carol Rumens, Penelope Shuttle and Myra Schneider. Their lines praise the virtues of the gift of nature to humankind, the fundamental aliment that operates as an agent of communication and solidarity, contributing to the development of self-identification by reinforcing interaction with others.