Fresh Baked Bread

Ahhh!! The aroma of freshly baked bread. It’s enough to make your mouth water. At least these days. Not so much in ancient Greece. Personally, I can’t imagine not enjoying the smell of baking bread, but in ancient Greece, I don’t suppose anyone took real notice of it. That’s because in those days, in Greece, bread slices were used only as napkins!! It seems incredulous, but due to the communal nature of their meals, where hands were used to eat that was exactly what bread was used for. The practice, called apomagdalia, involved tearing off small pieces of dough, rolling and kneading them at the table to clean fingers after a meal. Far from being wasteful, these used dough bits were often fed to dogs or tossed to the poor, who I’m sure were thankful, but…gross!! Nevertheless, the practice minimized waste and, it did feed the poor, so there is that. Eventually, someone decided to give the bread a try, I guess, because it later graduated to being eaten by the diners themselves, with added a sustainable layer to the dining ritual.

These days, we would think it rude to eat most foods with our hands, but back then it was uncommon to eat with utensils, and in fact there weren’t any utensils. Eating with your hand when it’s a hamburger or chicken wings seems normal to us, but to eat something like spaghetti or beef stew with your hands would be really messy. Nevertheless, if they wanted to eat, they made do. Later when the bread became a part of the meal, it was used to slop up any gravy or juice to clean up the plate. That practice has been seen in many a Western movie. I guess that as napkins go, bread was the tastiest, provided the cook knew how to make good bread.

Later, the Romans introduced cloth napkins, which eventually evolved into the modern version we use today. For a time, even before the napkin, the tablecloth was used as a communal napkin. That almost seems even stranger to me. I love my tablecloths, and to think of people wiping their messy hands on them makes me cringe. Maybe I wasn’t alone in that thought. After all, the Romans decided on actual napkins and moved away from the tablecloth. In my opinion the best napkins are made of paper, then they don’t even require washing. And to bring the world bad to sanity, the bread is no longer used as a napkin, but rather as a food. Imagine getting up in the morning to bake bread, only to have people wipe their hands with it. That is a crazy idea.