I can’t remember when I first heard this ‘saying’ – which makes me suspect it was during my wildly turbulent university days – but it goes like this . . .
Life is like a shit sandwich; the more bread you got, the less shit you eat.
But it don’t matter how much bread you got, cos’ you can’t quite get the foul taste outta your mouth.
Ever stopped to think about the importance we put on the word ‘bread’? When I was a teenager in the late 60s and early 70s, ‘bread’ was synonymous with money – and the amount of ‘dough’ you made determined how rough your ride through life would be.
My old man was the ‘bread winner’, in the traditional family way. (Never quite figured out how Mum got to be called ‘the Cheese’, but maybe that’s the way it was: bread and cheese seem to go together naturally.)
Bread: the staff of life, the basis of Christian ceremonial practice (and so many other religious ceremonies), a staple. Even the most basic prison food is pared back to those two essentials for maintaining life - bread and water.
The more I think about bread, the more complex it becomes!
This reminds me about something I read the other day. The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy, is the story of a man who rose to prominence as a corn and hay merchant in rural southern England in the mid-19th Century. When we first see him as a successful man in the town, he is having to confront the people of the town over the quality of his grain.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that the grain was harvested late, got damp and started to sprout in the ear before being dried for storage. It has therefore started the malting process. The real problem for the townspeople is that once it's ground by the local millers and used for bread by the bakers, the bread it produces is really bad - I can't remember the exact dialect term they use, but basically it's solid on the bottom and frothy on top - presumably because of much of the starch having been turned to sugar.
Anyway, it struck me as another reminder of how important access to bread is in so many cultures - not least because this incident is what ultimately leads to the tragic demise of this man over the remainder of the novel.
Hi Rich,
ReplyDeleteThe connection between bread making and brewing seems to go all the way back to the Egyptians, I have read that (possibly by accident) an ancient baker knocked some of his beer into the dough mix - and Bingo! - leavening took place.
Before that, Egyptian bread has been flat, dense loaves.