Friday, January 12, 2018

Bread Abounds...

...New literature and history

"Bread is important. One cannot put it more simply, and yet the reasons could scarcely be more complicated. It is the staff of life, transubstantiated in the eucharist into the body of a divinity; we break it with our companions (com– + pànis, with + bread); we pray for it daily to our Lord (from the Old English word hlàford, which originated from hlàfweard, meaning loaf-ward or bread-keeper); at the Passover Seder, observant Jews eat the bread of affliction, the unleavened matzo (the Catholic communion wafer is made to the same recipe). There is the enriched challah, which is blessed and thus sanctified on the Jewish Sabbath, the sweet Twelfth Night bread that contains a token effigy of the infant Jesus, dozens of Easter breads, numerous iftar breads baked for ending the fast in various Muslim cultures, and the Parsee dròn offering."

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