Bread & Salt

For a long time I was afraid of yeast! As I read cookbooks, I would just skip over any recipes that required yeast, so I never made any bread except for quick breads such as zucchini bread.

One day, a few years ago, I just decided it was time. I think the first bread I tried was a challah, and soon after I asked for some sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour for Mother’s Day. I have since made lots of different yeast breads and rolls, including bagels and babka, pizza and pumpernickel. I even make sourdough crackers on occasion, although those don’t use yeast, just some of the starter.

And now I have started giving bread and salt to friends and family when they move into to new home. Sometimes it’s when I first get to visit them in their new home, but often it’s a package mailed to arrive within a few days of moving. I’m not even sure where I first heard of this custom, though the idea seems to be that a house is not a home without bread and salt. But why?

We all know that things taste better salted, but, more importantly, throughout history salt has been extremely valuable for use in food preservation. The word salary comes from sal, the Latin word for salt, which certainly attests to its value. (And many other words also come from sal, such as salsa and salad, sauce and salami.)

And what of bread? Originally the word that comes to us as bread just meant food, whereas hlaf  (which became loaf) was specifically bread. Bread was so important that the words lord and lady come from compounds meaning ‘loaf-guardian’ and ‘loaf-maker’ respectively. Also noteworthy is that the Latin word for bread, panis, comes down to us in many words, among them, companion, from a compound of ‘with’ and ‘bread,’ in other words, a companion is someone with whom you share bread.

So the next time you have family or friends who move to a new home, consider bread (store-bought or homemade) and salt as a traditional gift to make their new house a home.