Wonderful bread – 24 sayings about our favourite staple food -

I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35, emphasis mine)

I have come to believe that food is history of the deepest kind. Everything we eat tells a tale of ingenuity and creation, domination and injustice—and does so more vividly than any other artifact, any other medium.

There is a bread for every occasion: a ficelle for breakfast, a baguette for lunch, a pain de mie for croque monsieur, a bigger pain de campagne or sourdough to put on the table or to keep and toast through the whole week.

Even the lightest, whitest of manchet breads is heavier, nuttier, denser and more filling than most of us are used to, and the commoner maslin and dredge breads are solid indeed by modern standards. They all require plenty of chewing, especially the darker breads. The crusts of the breads are thick and crunchy, sharply different from the softer cru

A pain de levain or pain de campagne, on the other hand, is bought to last for 2–3 days, to slice at first, and then to cut up into croûtons, to toast, to make tartines, or to put in slices into soup or a pot-au-feu. No bread in France is ever wasted.