Bread & Grains

Humans have eaten bread for at least 8,000 years. We have made it round, oblong, square, and triangular; flat as a pancake or fat as a loaf. Bread has been twisted into a symbol of the winter solstice, spiced, sweetened, garlicked, and filled with fresh vegetables. Though it has been made of every grain, it was the raised wheaten form that first inspired human and divine palates.

Bread has long been worshipped as the “staff of life.” But in the West today, bread is usually encountered in plastic bags, presliced and stripped of nutrients, bran, and wheat germ. It is “fortified” with just enough vitamins to satisfy government standards and may be artificially flavoured and preserved.

Perhaps the greatest indignity to which our bread is subjected is being pumped with air. This creates what is known in the grocery trade as “balloon bread.”

Not long ago, bread was a divine substance, directly linked with the goddesses and gods of the earth, lovingly crafted with grain and water. Flat, unleavened breads sustained millions of humans. Due to our forerunner dependence upon bread, these loaves also played important roles in birth celebrations, spirituality, and death.

Before the advent of agriculture, humans gathered wild grains and hunted. This forced them to live nomadic lives in small family groups. Eventually women— who had always gathered grain—discovered agriculture. As fields were planted with grain, people began putting down roots. Life stabilized and civilization began.  Grain, most often eaten in the form of bread or grain paste and soon became far more important than meat.

Earlier European civilizations dedicated grain to state deities: Inanna in Sumer; Ishtar in Babylon; Osiris in Egypt; Indra in India; Demeter in Greece; Spes and Ceres (from whose name we take our word “cereal”) in Rome; Xipe, Cinteotl, and Mayauel in ancient Mexico; and various forms of the corn mother throughout the Americas. Bread, the basic product of grain, was offered to the deities. Ishtar, Shamash, and Marduk were each given thirty loaves a day in Sumer.

Bread, the basic product of grain, was offered to the deities. Ishtar, Shamash, and Marduk were each given thirty loaves a day in Sumer. Ra, Amon, Ptah, and Nekhbet received their share in Egypt.  Demeter, the Greek goddess of bread, grain, and agriculture, was also similarly honoured. The Phoenicians stamped Astarte’s loaves with a horned symbol (linked with the moon) to deify the bread.

The ancient Egyptians, whom Herodotus described as “the bread eaters,” probably invented leavened bread. Along with onions and beer, it became a basic part of their diet. The Egyptians offered bread to the deities and to sacred animals (including cats), and stocked tombs with enormous amounts of the divine food for future use by the deceased. They are said to have baked fifty varieties of bread in numerous shapes. Some were heavily spiced and salted, though the priests and priestesses dedicated to certain deities avoided salted breads.

Bread pigs formed from dough were sometimes sacrificed in place of live pigs by those too poor to afford the real thing. The bread pig was accepted as a suitable sacrifice in ancient Egypt.

Eventually, wheat (or barley) bread became a symbol of life itself. “Breaking bread” was more than a process of nourishing the body; it became a meal that bound together all those who ate it. Eating a simple meal was a part of many Pagan religions, and such a ritual meal, transformed into the ritual of communion, later became an established part of Christian ritual.

Bread has also had its magical uses. In seventeenth-century England, a loaf of bread was floated on the surface of the water to find the body of a person who had drowned. Midwives placed bread into a woman’s bed while she was in labour to prevent the theft of both the woman and her baby.

In contemporary Greece, men being inducted into the army are sometimes given pieces of bread, which are thought to confer protection and victory in battle. Field workers in Greece may pack a bit of bread with their lunch. It isn’t eaten at midday, but only upon safe return to the home each evening. A small piece of bread secreted under children’s pillows guards them while they sleep.

In other parts of Europe, bread is formally presented to children as soon as they recognize it. This ritual blesses the infant with food for its entire lifetime. Carpathian Gypsies carried small pieces of bread in
 their pockets to avoid danger and trouble during their continuing journeys.

British and American folklore still acknowledge the potency of bread. When moving into a new home, many carry in a loaf of bread and salt, for continued food and luck, before moving anything else.  Other superstitions related to the baking, slicing and eating of bread still survive in our technological lives.

Food historians speculate that humans have eaten bread in one form or another since at least the late Stone Age.  Raised (yeast) breads were probably first made in Egypt in around four thousand B.C.E.  As we rediscover the value of grains and add them to our diets, it’s enriching to know the wonders once ascribed to these simple foodstuffs that have been worshipped as life-giving gifts from the forces that watch us from above