Home -> Articoli -> Grecia - Alimentazione e banchetti

Bread in ancient Greece

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Bread
For Greece bread was the basic aliment. It could look different from one to another part of the country, but only because different were the forms with which it was shaped. Always bread it was. In Greece as any city had its preference there were a great numbers of type, to wit 66 variety. Beside the normal bread there were many kinds of loaves more or less intersting, included the ones that were made for some religious festivity and to be offered to some particural divinity; among these, as an example, there were the very big ones offered to Demetra for bthe recurrence of the “Megalartia”, to wit “large breads”, the “akenai”, that were brought to the goddess chanting
“A goat full of lard for our grieved lady”
Evidently in those occasions these tasty loaves knead with lardmorsels were shaped as animals, in this case as a goat to substitute the real and more expensive one.
Of course apart from these specials occasions’s bread, there was the commercial one
destined to common consumation, and the homemade one.
Among all other breads Greeks highly prized the barley one. The great Archestratus of Gela called it “alfita” in his Hedyphagetica and praised it. Apart of this one ther was of course the wheat’s one. Of this there was differrent kinds and different names. The bakers liked to form their loaves in actractive shapes and season them with aromatic seeds. Better among the bakers were the Lydians or the Phoenicians, or at least according to Archestratus who prescribed to his readers
“Ensure yourself to have in your house a Lydian or Phoenician baker able to prepare each day any kind of bread could came in your mind to order.”
There were so many kind of breads that the plutocrats of the times had only the embarras du choix to orders what they wanted to their bakers. There was the common brea, the “agelaios”, and the very special “boletinos” a bread shaped as a mushroom and flavoured with poppy seeds. Apart to season the bread with poppy seeds, also other seeds were used as cumin, linseed, sesame, that are cited by Alcman
“Seven tricliniar couches and seven tables charged with breads, some seasoned with poppy seed,and also linseed bread and sesame one and in the cups the sweet and golden potion
Then there were rolls made as flowers: the “apaloi” and the “krinoi”, these last ones shaped as lilies, and some other made as the lyre’s “collabus” which just “collabi” were called, and apart of all these came the very large flat wafers, and the very long ancient loaf which looked as our french bread, then the twists, all kinds of bread and all made adding to the dough milk, oil, pepper and lard. Also another bun, the “tridakisine”, is mentioned, a name which is derived from the lettuce probably related to its thin and large surface. In contrapposition there was the “kubos” very similar to our sandwich loaf which was seasoned with aniseed and cheese and kneaded with oil. It is mentioned in “The art of cooking” by Heracleides.
Bread could also be differentiate by the way of cooking it. There was the bread cooked in a special oven called “ kribanus”, a portable very ancient oven where were prepared the “kribanai” little rolls shaped like breasts. Then there was the “artopticeus” a bread discussed also by Pliny the Elder and the oven bread called “ipnites” that was made in the bakeries and these without taking in account the bread cooked on coals or the one put under the ashes. A very special and appreciated quality what the one that was called the brazier’s bread, a flat and very soft and spongy loaf that was eaten soaking it in sweet wine as is told by Antidotus in his comedy “The first dancer”
“He took hot brazier bread - and why shouldn’t he take it? – and after having folded it in two he dipped it in the sweet wine”
Lynceus of Samos in his letters to Diagoras compare the Athenian food with the Rhodian one and tells
“Besides this, the bread one finds in their markets is renown and they serve it without limitation at the beginning and at the middle of their banquets. Then, when they are tired to eat and satiated they serve a splendid temptation, consisting in what they call “oily hot brazier bread”. It is a delicious and soft dough, dipped in sweet wine in such a pleasant way that it produces a marvelous effect on whoever tastes it. As it very often happen, who eats it experience that his appetite has come back”
This hot bread tipped in wine was called “blema” word that usually means a “throw” or also a “stroke”. To us it looks as the ancestor of the modern “babà”.

Bybliography
Scientific popularization
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, A pranzo nell'antica Grecia in Archeo 10, December 1984, pp. 40-43.
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, L'alimentazione nell'antichitá in l'Eterno Banchetto: l'arte culinaria dell'Antica Roma 22-29 June 1987.
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Dossier: L'alimentazione nel mondo greco in Archeo, nº 44, October 1988, pp.48-91
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, L'alimentazione ed il banchetto in epoca greca in L'arcano convito, Cultural publications of the “Cassa di Risparmio di Verona, Vicenza e Milano”, pp. 44-47 September 1989.
20 - E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Monography Le ricette più antiche del mondo in Archeo: le attualità del passato. Anno VIII, n° 1, febbraio 1999

Books
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI,L’arte del convito nell’antica Grecia. L’evoluzione del gusto da Achille ad Alessandro Magno , L’ERMA DI BRETSCHNEIDER, ROME, 2005.