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The story behind a loaf of bread
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Saturday, 10 November, 2007, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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i hit on theelectioneering catchphrase "Roti , kapda, makaan" (bread, clothing, shelter) she knew the slogan would have a primal appeal to the impoverished electorate. Mahatma Gandhi once said, ""There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."
No admirer of the Mahatma, the left leaning lady's slogan could have well been inspired by Russia's Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks who promised "Peace, Land, and Bread," which became a mainstay slogan of Soviet propaganda.
The per capita consumption of bread in India was at last count, two kg; in China less than 1 kg, Saudi Arabia and Chile consume a whopping 100 kg, Western Europe 70 kg and the UK 55 kg. In India, the bread segment in the bakery products business has been growing at 8% over the last two years. But bread has been a principal form of food for man from earliest times. Neolithic man consumed bread. How do we know? From wheat which has been found in human settlements which flourished 8,000 years ago. Archaeologists have dug out a millstone used for grinding corn that is believed to be 7,500 years old.
The ability to grow crops could well be one of the prime reasons which led man to dwell in agrarian communities, rather than to live a wandering life hunting and herding cattle The trade of the baker, then, is one of the oldest crafts in the world. Loaves and bread rolls have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs. Last week, a 70-year-old car-shaped tin of cookies went under the hammer at an auction in London. The asking price? Three thousand euros. Whoever bought it would be well advised not to eat the cookies. It boggles the mind though to think of the taste of the 5,000-year-old Pharaonic loaves housed in the British Museum's Egyptian galleries. This section also has grains of wheat going back some 5,000 years to the reign of the Pharaohs. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo has various word-pictures, or hieroglyphs, concerning bread, including a bas-relief, dated 2650 BC showing the harvesting of grain in ancient Egypt.
Bread, both leavened and unleavened, is mentioned in the Bible time and again.
For Christians, bread is an important part of the Mass or Eucharistic celebration, used to symbolise Christ who said, " I am the bread of life". One of the most exquisite songs in the history of Western classical music is Panis Angelicus (Bread of Angels) the penultimate strophe of the hymn Sacris solemniis written by St Thomas Aquinas as part of a complete liturgy of the Feast of Corpus Christi (Body of Christ) which César Franck set to music and incorporated in his Messe Solemnelle.
In olden days when entire loaves were used at Mass, the sign of the cross was performed with the knife on the bread's surface, before the loaf was cut. Today, the "old-fashioned" loaves have been replaced by the small coin-shaped portions of flat, unleavened bread known as communion. Christians consider it a sin to desecrate the bread (by discarding it.)
Bread is a popular food in most societies, although much of East Asia prefers rice or noodles. In India, people in the northern states prefer to eat various types of bread made from wheat. In the south, rice is the preferred staple. In its simplest form, bread is made from a wheat-flour dough that is cultured with yeast, allowed to rise, and finally baked in an oven.
The basic recipe of bread has many variations including pizza, tortillas, baguettes, brioche, pitas, lavash, biscuits, bagels, pretzels, naan, chapatis, puris, parathas, rotis and many other variations.
In Spain, bread is called "pan", and it's one of the countries all over the world with more different types of bread, about 315. There is a region called "Tierra del Pan" (literally translated as "Land of the Bread"), located in the province of Zamora. German has 80 types of bread, arguably, the most popular is the black bread made from rye.
In Britain and the United States and increasingly in India's urban areas, the most widely consumed type of bread is a soft-textured, thin crusted and sold ready-sliced in packages. However, Roti or Chapati, types of flat breads which are fried rather than baked, remain vastly popular in India which has many variants as there are states. One variant uses whole wheat, another uses mustard flour rather than white flour. Still another uses bajra. Naan is baked in brick ovens and is rarely prepared at home. White and brown sliced breads are also quite common in the towns and cities, but not as much as Roti. In Goa, breads (known as paos) are dented on both sides and braised with ghee or butter which give them a nice glaze. Almost as popular is the poee, a far healthier brown variety made with bran. Jews have traditionally baked challah, a type of egg bread with a thin, hard crust and a soft, well-leavened centre. It is made by wrapping plaits of dough and then lightly baking them in an oven. Challah is sometimes sweetened using honey or raisins.
In Morocco, a round bread is used to eat most of the cuisine. In Scotland, another form of bread called plain bread is also consumed. In France, pan bread is known as pain de mie and is used only for toast or for making stuffing; standard bread (in the form of baguettes or thicker breads) has a thick crust and often has large bubbles of air inside. It is often baked three times daily and is sold totally unwrapped to keep the crust crisp. Some fancy breads contain walnuts, or are encrusted with poppy seeds.
Focaccia, popular in Italy, is usually seasoned with olive oil and herbs, and often topped with cheese or stuffed with meat or vegetables. In some parts of Italy, bread and olive oil is a meal by itself for the common man.
As a food item of great importance in most cultures, bread is significant beyond mere nutritive values. Bread has been immortalised in poetry (the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam) literature ( Bread loaf is the name of America's oldest and arguably, most prestigious, writers conferences ) and religion.
In Christianity, The Lord's Prayer (Pater Noster), contains the phrase 'Give us today our daily bread'; which is commonly understood to mean necessities in general. The New Testament records that Christ fed the hungry with loaves of bread ( and fishes) In Israel, the most common phrase in strikes is "lekhem, avoda" [bread, work], and during the 1950s, the hippie community in the West used the terms bread and dough as euphemisms for money. In Slavic countries, bread and salt is offered as a welcome to all guests. A 'bread-winner' is a household's main economic contributor. The term "breadbasket" is often used to denote an agriculturally productive region. In Newfoundland, bread was seen as having the power to protect against fairies.
The political significance of bread is considerable. There were a large number of laws regulating the sale and milling of grains and of bread production. England's Assize of Bread, the earliest English legislation regulating the price of seven types of loaves, dates from the 51st year of reign of Henry III (1266) and imposed heavy punishments for short-changing bakers. An illustrated version of the Magna Carta, created less than a 100 years after the Assize, records the sum and substance of those statutes.
The ill-fated Marie Antoinette, Empress of France, is falsely charged with having said, "If they have no bread, let them eat cake." In 19th century Britain, the inflated price of bread due to the Corn Laws caused major political and social divisions, and was central to debates over free trade and protectionism. In the final analysis, being th
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