Blessed with bread

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1:17Emiko Davies:I'm currently inside the Church of San Miniato. This is the little Tuscan town where I live, just outside of Florence. It's very, very quiet. There's only a couple people in here. I'm on my way to the Museum of the Duomo, which is just next door. one of my favourite religious paintings is in there and I wanted to take you to see it.

1:48Emiko Davies:So the painting I wanted to show you is a Lorenzo Lippi painting. He was a Florentine artist of the 1600s. It's titled Jesus, Blessing of the Bread. And it's a very, very simple painting. There's Jesus Christ wearing a red gown and a blue robe. And the angel is presenting him with this loaf of bread on a silver tray. Just a really ordinary, round, country-style loaf. You can see a little peak of the white crumb. It's like this really essential, very rustic, basic food. is perfectly elevated to something revered and sacred.

2:45This is the documentary from the BBC World Service with me, Emiko Davies, a food writer and cookbook author. For Heart and Soul, exploring personal approaches to spirituality around the world, I'm touring my adopted home of Italy and the Catholic faith by eating lots of bread. Bread was always there. It was something to thank the gods for. Bread has taken on meaning in almost all corners of life here. Beyond the act of Holy Communion, where it symbolises the body of Christ, it embodies the Italian values of community, tradition and quality.

3:30reverence for bread is practiced at daily meals and rituals

3:33Emiko Davies:the way to eat this bread is you have to rip it apart with your hands you're not allowed to cut it religious festivals elevate bread to something far beyond mere food for me bread is a life it's to friendship to love And if you follow the trail of breadcrumbs, you can begin to understand how religion in Italy is changing. These celebrations are relics of a world that is changing very, very fast.

4:15My journey begins in Sicily, where many of Italy's strongest bread traditions remain. I'm driving to the west of the island, where coastal mountains fade away to lush fields. Tomorrow, the 19th of March, Sicilians celebrate St. Joseph, or San Giuseppe. We're currently in the middle of Lent, so no meat is allowed, but instead local communities will construct altars laden with greens and decorative breads. My first stop is the town of Salaparuta, where specialty biscuits are being prepared for the feast.

4:49Emiko Davies:We're in an incredible landscape, basically on a hilltop, completely surrounded by vineyards. Very, very green, very beautiful. I think we're about to meet the whole family who run this winery here, and we're going to see somebody making these beautiful breads for the San Giuseppe altars. My name is Katia, and this is my family.

5:28Emiko Davies:This is Caterina Rizzuto. She's been making these squattucciate for a long time. She started as a hobby, as a passion, and now continues making them. This impasto is farina, sugna and zucchero. It's a really simple dough made with lard, flour and sugar. So she has the fig dough rolled into snakes to create the shape that she wants. And in this case, she's making a palm leaf. Most Sicilian towns have their own unique bread to celebrate San Giuseppe. Here, it's squattuccato, a flat biscuit with a sweet dried fig filling and ornate lace-like designs over the top. She's got a little box of tools here.

6:19Emiko Davies:Oh, questi sono quelli per la ceramica. They look like tools for ceramics.

6:28San Giuseppe, St. Joseph, is the patron saint of her village here. And so for her, this is a way to thank San Giuseppe. I mean, this is a sacrifice for her because she spends from morning till night. You know, her body feels it at the end of the day. So it is sort of a sacrifice that she does to San Giuseppe.

6:54Katia has been sitting with us watching her mother

6:57Emiko Davies:and we were just chatting about how many people actually know how to make these.

7:09young people have sort of lost the the sense of devotion that you know traditionally people have

7:16Emiko Davies:that her mother has they've lost the sense of gratitude and like wanting to devote time

7:27Emiko Davies:She's a bit sad about this because in 10 or 15 years you're going to lose these kind of traditions completely. People are not going to know even how to make them, but also the community is not going to be coming together like it was when she was young.

7:45San Giuseppe's Day is celebrated across all of Italy normally as Father's Day, But in Sicily, it has special significance. During the Middle Ages, this island suffered a prolonged drought and devastating famine, and Sicilians are said to have prayed to San Giuseppe for protection. When the rains eventually came and they could eat again, the island promised to honour him with a feast.

8:11The south of Italy in general is a little bit less developed, let's say, compared to the north. So possibly this has helped preserve some traditions longer. My name is Fabrizia Lanz. I am a Sicilian. I live in Sicily and I've been researching Sicilian and Italian food since 20 years. Before religions came in, you had a relation with the whole world or underworld through magic. And then when religion came in, food was a way to thank God and to understand the sacred value of life and the preciousness of life. In Sicily, where the Industrial Revolution never arrived, you always depend on the climate, on the weather, on what happens.

9:08And this creates a very specific mentality in farmers. this relation with the other is very constant because you can't control all the elements so rains earthquakes or whatever happens is something above you and your life depends on these elements this is where the magic and the religious part gets in to the food what's interesting in Sicily is that still you have traces of these pagan rituals, which are obviously overdressed with Catholicism or other religions approaches. But there's not a moment when it starts and a moment where it ends. I would say that progress and the fact that young people are less interested in all of this, this is what is going to abruptly dismiss this type of belief.

10:14Although many don't have the same depth of belief today, Italy's spiritual connection to bread remains in small, embedded, everyday activities, something I often bear witness to back in my home region of Tuscany, 700-odd kilometres north of Sicily.

10:35Emiko Davies:I've just arrived at the home of two friends of mine, Emanuele and Nico Bianucci. They're two brothers and they run a bakery called Isse Minanti. Emanuele has been up since about 5am but he's about to put his sourdough bread in the oven so I'm here to try and catch that.

11:00Emiko Davies:Emanuele is preparing the loaves of rye bread at the moment, scooping it up with a bench scraper and then they go into tins.

11:16Emiko Davies:the tradition of baking bread what does this tradition mean for you so the tradition for us is that it's like we have a big responsibility the people think about the bread like something necessary for the life i think a lot of the reverence for bread across italy comes out in some of the daily practices, some of them maybe a little bit superstitious. For example, you know when you come home and you put your bag of groceries on the kitchen table and perhaps the loaf of bread that you've bought rolls out of the bag and it might be upside down. Something like that would drive my husband crazy. Because bread is considered so sacred, placing it upside down would be disrespectful.

12:06Emiko Davies:respectful, it's equivalent to like turning your back on God.

12:15Emiko Davies:Manuela just recounted that his nonna, if a slice of bread fell on the floor, she would kiss it before putting it back on the table. You'll often find bread with a cross over it, so sort of scored into the bread. And that is like the baker's way of praying for that bread to come out so that it will feed a family. And then another really important thing is that bread should never be wasted. Throwing away some old bread, I mean, aside from it, that was incredibly wasteful, but it would also be considered basically blasphemous to throw away your bread. Even the breadcrumbs on a tablecloth would have been swept up.

12:57In the past, the harvest that all the people made was the food that you have for the next year. Now we don't remember that you lost the meaning of the harvest.

13:11Emiko Davies:We're just waiting for the bread to finish baking. The first batch of loaves went in about 50 minutes ago, so they're nearly ready to come out. Why do you think bread is so important in Italian religious life? The bread is so religious for Italy because from the beginning of our history, the grain and the wine are the main theme of our tradition. I think that there is always a link with the place that you live and the product that the agriculture gives to you. We're opening the oven door. It's beautiful. Look at them.

14:09Emiko Davies:They're tapping the bottom of the loaves just to see if they're properly cooked. You need the hollow sound. The agriculture, it's the only thing that you plant one and you harvest more than one. It's bigger than you. And that must have seemed miraculous for humans when we discovered we could do something like that. And probably it's that, that in the past, probably when you have less knowledge, it's a link with a miracle. Yeah. Each harvest is miraculous, isn't it? Yeah. Emanuela has to put some more wood into the oven so that it can come back up to the right temperature. Now the oven door is closing.

15:03Emiko Davies:And Emanuela makes the sign of the cross as he closes the door and he gives a little laugh when he does that. I'm going to ask him a bit more about that when he comes back.

15:22Emiko Davies:He does the sign of the cross when he closes the oven door because making bread is something very sacred and this bread is going to go through a sacred transformation.

15:36So a friend of his told him that her nonna, her grandfather,

15:41Emiko Davies:would do this little laugh as he closed the door to bake his bread as a sign of good fortune and good luck with the bread. Come on, come on.

15:57This is the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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17:38I'm Emiko Davies, and for this edition of Heart and Soul, I'm exploring Italy's Catholic faith through its many breads. It's now the day of San Giuseppe. I've travelled east to Salemi, a town famous for its bread altars, and it really takes a whole village to make this happen.

17:59Emiko Davies:There's this huge archway as you enter the town made with bay leaf and garlands of oranges and lemons and completely decorated by different shaped breads. There are loads of people arriving already to see the altars, and we're going to make our way down the main street. St. Joseph happens to be on the 19th of March, so it's right in the middle of the changing of the season. Sicilian food expert Fabrizia Lanza again. Pre-Christian days, it started like a nymph to birth, to abundance, to harvest and to all of this. With Catholicism and Christianism, it became also a way to control and verify how the community was doing.

18:51Traditionally, San Giuseppe altars were constructed in people's homes. A family that had recovered from hardship or illness that year and wanted to give thanks would hold the feast privately. Along with the San Giuseppe breads, they would serve 101 dishes and invite three poor children from the village to eat with them. They represent the Holy Virgin, Jesus and Joseph, and they will be served by the owner of the altar. By feeding the three poor kids of a village, you would check upon three families and eventually help them, support them. Today in Salemi, several public altars are constructed, and the feast is attended by the entire town.