The Rise of Bread
Roberto Bechi | Tours by Roberto
In Italian the word for “bread” is pane, the etymological root for which is pà meaning “nourishment.” We find the same root in the translation of “meal”, pasto. I personally love our idiom for describing a very good, honest, humble and true man: “buono come il pane” (“as good as bread'). Indeed, considering how fundamental bread has been historically to our lives, perhaps it's not a coincidence that Jesus decided to use it in the Last Supper in place of His body.
We know that ancient cultures like the Mesopotamian or the Egyptian ones already had wheat flat bread, and that in Italy, the Etruscans (our first civilization) had flatbread made with spelt flour, none of which had leavening. It was the ancient Greeks who used yeast and created hundreds of types of breads. Of course, the Romans conquered them, and consequently in 15 BC, we have the first evidence of a bakery in Rome. In the Middle Ages, people went back to baking it at home. Only in the late Middle Ages, especially in Tuscany, did bakers reappear, and indeed a collective of many bakers created a confraternita or guild.
Baker’s guild coat-of-arms
Image | Horemhat, Wikimedia Commons
In the hilltop city of Siena, where I was born and raised, bread was synonymous with charity. During the 13th century, the main road that connected the Byzantine world with the emerging northern European cultures passed through this area. Siena was already a republic, and every pilgrim that went back and forth to Rome could stop at the Siena Hospital (Santa Maria della Scala) and receive a complimentary small loaf to assuage their hunger. Even today, inside the hospital (today an amazing museum) you can see a 15th- century fresco depicting a child receiving a small loaf stamped with a ladder, the symbol of the hospital. No bread with this stamp could be sold: it was "offered bread" and profits from it were illegal.
Frecsco by Domenico di Bartolo
Image | José Luiz Bernardes Ribero, Wikimedia Commons
During my studies, I came across a document written by the Florentine chronicler, Giovanni Villani, who described a time of famine when Siena did not have enough bread to distribute to its suffering citizens. He describes a line of people returning home breadless, desolate and heads low, "chewing on some dry meat to stop the hunger", showing that bread was seen as the "real" food and dried meat less satisfying.
That feeling continued over time. When I was a child, every time we used to visit my grandmother, she would give my mother a bag of white flour, one of sugar, and a box of salt. At that time, I never understood why she made gifts of such common, inexpensive items, and why she had six of each stored in the pantry! Later, though, I realized that having been born in 1919 and having suffered through the Depression and the Second World War, she was always conscious that hard times can come back. In her own way, she was seeing to it that bread would never be lacking on her watch.
Image | Hathaipat K
Today in Italy, we have 250 types of bread with thousands of variations. We live in comfortable times—opulent by the standards of our grandparents' society—but when you come to visit Italy, you will find many typical dishes born out of a different epoch when absolutely nothing was let go to waste. Indeed, stale bread is a staple recycled in many hundreds of ways, from bruschetta to pici alle briciole and panzanella. The most humble of ingredients makes for a noble dish.
I hope after reading my article you will taste history in your next bite of bread and aspire to be “buono come il pane”!
