Bread

Bread has always been the Ur-food of the country, the primary nourishment upon which Italians depend. Bread, made simply of flour, water, yeasts from the air, and salt from the sea, feeds people and connects them to family, to land, to the greater powers of the cosmos. It begins with yeast, the soul of its being, a living product suspended in a dormant state, which returns to life once when it is dissolved in warm water or kneaded vigorously into the dough and again when the heat of the oven miraculously transforms four simple ingredients into loaves baked on the hearth. Women knead the anxieties and uncertainties of daily life into their dough and shape it into wheels as round as the sun.