In 2600 B.C., the Egyptians made bread of farro (Triticum spelta) that was 7 centimeters in diameter. In more ancient times, in Israel, bread was hardly more than 3 centimeters in length. It appears as though Jews were the first to discover leavening, though the Egyptians were the first to use it on a large scale. They produced a white bread called hori that was refined and leavened.
Though the discovery of leavening influenced its consumption, unleavened bread never totally disappeared since the ancient Egyptians continued offering the gods unleavened flatbread during their religious rituals.
High priests, as well, were only supposed to eat unleavened bread. Both in Egypt and Israel, white bread was eaten by the nobles while the common people fed themselves on flatbread made of mixed flour containing wheat, spelt, bran, and legumes. The Egyptians needed bread with their feet, added sea salt, and shaped the bread which they then baked on burning stones or in special ovens called TANUR.

In Mesopotamia, in Ur, people often ate flatbread made from barley, wheat, and millet flour. Just like the Egyptian priests, those in Mesopotamia also offered the gods leavened bread, sweet bread called akal mutqu or yufka, which they themselves also ate.
(Roman priests couldn’t touch anything other than unleavened bread either).

The ancient populations that settled on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea were also familiar with bread, which they made into flatbreads, very similar to Italian piadinas, using only flour and water. In 1550 B.C., in Crete, people cooked thin, disk-like flatbread on embers.
Leavened bread was available, but was considered precious and very rare.

The Greeks would malt barley by soaking it in water until it germinated. They then lightly toasted it so that it became more digestible.
They milled it and, mixing it with flour and water, made maza or azymos – a round, hard, gray flatbread that, baked on embers or on burning stones, was eaten for centuries with Greek meals. To this day, in Greece, people eat hard though flaky barley bagels, double-baked in the oven.
In Puglia (a southern region of Italy), people eat barley cookies made similarly. At times when there was little barley flour, the Greeks mixed in dry fava bean and varieties of millet flour. The ancient Greeks also used different kinds of spelt and eventually even soft wheat. Based on how the grain was milled, the wheat grains could be large, medium or superfine. Grape must was used as yeast. The Greeks were the first to successfully experiment making bread. The idea of mixing every sort of spices and herbs into the dough to make it go along with many types of dishes comes from them.
In classical times, they produced unleavened bread: darathon from Thessaly; bromite, a dark bread made of wild oats; syncomiste, a bread made of different types of scrap flour; crimnites made of unrefined barley; semidalites made of fine powdery wheat; cribanites baked in a flat pan or in a little oven used to toast barley.

In Ancient Greece, a common type of pastry bread was baked on charcoal and preserved in fresh rolls. Even today it is commonly found and eaten with the nation’s typical legume dishes. Pieces of bread are broken off and used as spoons. This thin flatbread is quite similar to the Sardinian bread known as carta da musica or “music sheet” bread, the piadina from the region of Romagna in Italy, and the unleavened bread spoken of in the Gospel from which the bread used in Holy Communion originates. The Greeks made bread with honey, raisins, dried figs,
olives, and vincotto or “cooked wine”. They made candied maza with flavorful seeds and various types of flour. Bread was eaten with many kinds of standard daily food. Breakfast often included maza bread, cheese, and figs. In the city, maza bread was dipped in wine. A simple lunch included maza bread with cheese, olives or fried fish. Sometimes people preferred eating little flatbreads stuffed with anchovies. Dinner included roast meat served on piadinas that were used as plates.

Inhabitants from the Lombard Lakes around 1200 B.C. ate loaves of bread kneaded from various kinds of flour. The unleavened flatbread was baked on hot, round stones. These piadas were hard in texture and difficult to digest. In Ancient Italy, the Etruscans were most likely the ones to have taught the local people how to cook cereal grains. Farinata, a typical flatbread in Italy, was actually an Etruscan specialty.
The best farro was far clusinum which came from the Etruscan regions. The earliest Italian shepherds fed themselves on beech tree fruit and acorns.

Influenced by the Etruscans, the earliest Romans began using spelt, barley, fava beans, and vetch. Ceres, to the ancient Italic tribe known as the Sabine people, was deemed the grain that gave life, or “cereal”. In Rome, it became the goddess of crops. The first harvested grain by the Romans was barley, first tetrasticum (with four rows of kernels), then hexasticum (with six rows), and finally disticum (with two rows).
These three varieties of barley all had adherent glumes able to be eliminated after being lightly toasted. Using barley flour, the earliest Romans made puls, a thin flatbread, and unleavened bread. Barley was then replaced by wheat and used only in the event of famine. For 300 years, the only grain used by Romans was farro – a hard wheat grain similar to spelt whose kernels needed to be toasted in order to get rid of the adherent glumes. Newly weds traditionally offered Zeus a piece of farro flatbread, called conferreato, at wedding rituals. Farro was handed out
as gifts to victorious soldiers. Other cereal grains used were einkorn and spelt. Hard wheat, with lemmas that opened on their own and were hence easily threshed, replaced farro in the 4th century B.C. From that moment on, it was possible to leaven wheat as toasting grain was no longer necessary. And as a result, leavened bread appeared.

After the 4th century B.C., soft wheat, able to be used to make light and soft leavened bread, could also be found. Emergency food during famines comprised varieties of millet and rye. Rye was used in the 1st century A.D. by the Ligurian-Celtic Taurini people from Piedmont, Italy. In 100 B.C., bread had almost entirely replaced polentine made of cereal grains. Before leavened bread asserted itself over the territory once and for all, unleavened flatbread, cooked on embers or baked in the oven, was the favorite and appeared in Rome around 170 A.D. It was a type of thin biscuit, plain and rather hard. Even so, it was a food for the wealthy despite that, hardening in a few hours, it became inedible.
Roman biscuits were never eaten alone. Cheese was eaten along with it. Cato, a strict figure of Ancient Rome, was against the use of this new food for Romans since it needed to be eaten along with something else. He was convinced that such a food would have made his simple fellow countrymen greedy and plump. Bread, however, became an important element in the Roman diet nonetheless. For Romans, making bread in the morning became a basic ritual, just as making puls had once been.

A new tradition had begun and, in the end, even Cato gave up using unleavened bread. Following this, yeast was discovered and unleavened bread was kept only for religious rituals. All of Rome by now was using leavened bread with the exception of soldiers, which continued eating unleavened bread.
Little by little many types of bread were being made and unleavened bread was consumed only in times of famine. In Rome, bread was baked in several ways: in the oven (fornaceus), in a special pan over coals (artopticus) or laid out like a piadina on earthenware and left to fall semi-cooked on embers (clibanicus). The oldest baked bread was made on embers. This is facaceus bread, which gave way to Italian focaccia bread. It was seasoned in many ways, covered with aniseed, fennel, and celery. In 369 B.C., people were still handed out public bread, called panis gradilis, of the lowest quality.
Roman cakes and sweets began as votive offerings. The first was libum, a sweet bread with flour and honey eaten after ceremonies by priests, their servants, and the people attending the ceremony. Janual was a special kind of libum offered to Janus. Tarunda was a votive flatbread made with farro and honey.
With the expansion of its own dominion, Roman cooking was enriched with other sweets like crustulum, laganum, laterculus, mustacea, testuacium, and finally placenta.

Several barbarian invasions influenced the eating habits of the Italian populations without changing them drastically. In the Middle Ages, the common people only ate what they produced or found wild in the woods. They ate more or less like the Roman common people. The lords established the use of their mills to draw earnings, which ended up causing great divides. At this time, in England, the term lord was created, which derives from the term hlaford, a word in Old English that meant “bread keeper”. Lords were, in fact, those who distributed bread.
The word lady comes from hlaefdige, or “loaf-kneader”, since the lords’ wives were those who made the bread that their husbands then distributed to the people. In 1300, the year of the plague, the peasant class was no longer able to eat leavened bread and went back to eating barley polenta and unleavened flatbread made with lower-grade cereal grains and dry legumes.

People in Northern Europe harvested rye, barley, and oats that they used to make coarse, heavy types of bread. The nobles used a type of bread called tagliere, meaning “cutting board” – a hard, unleavened flatbread that different kinds of food were placed on. At the end of the meal, the bread was eaten, tossed out to the animals or given to the poor. The Vikings – great meat eaters as they were – didn’t despise barley or oat polentas, which made up their typical breakfast. They also fed themselves on rye bread and white bread. Servants ground the cereal grains by hand.
They ate different kinds of bread as only nobles could eat refined bread. Mixing barley flour with legume flour and ground pine bark was a very common practice. Hard bread was able to be made this way. It was bitter and hard to digest, though containing vitamin C, prevented outbreaks of scurvy.
The bread was cooked in iron pans with a long handle that rotated around a pivot. The result was a crunchy biscuit known as knackbröt, or hardtack, frequently used on long sea voyages since it didn’t spoil easily.

500 years ago in pre-Colombian America, some groups of people were already feeding themselves on corn tortillas. The women soaked the cobs in limewater for a whole night and then, after a careful washing, ground the kernels on a flat stone called metate, over which a cylindrical stone was rolled. They then kneaded the flour with their hands and made flat, thin patties with dough that cooked quickly on an earthenware pan over the fire. They stored these thin flatbreads in one half of a carved out pumpkin, covering them with wool cloth to keep them warm.
They are still used today by many people in America as plates, spoons or simply as bread.

People commonly ate different types of cereal grains even in India and China.In China, where the most widespread cereal grain is rice, people even ate fried flatbread made with cereal grains or millet flour. In India, since the earliest ancient times, wheat and other cereal grains were abundantly cultivated. Back then, as today, thin unleavened flatbread such as chapatti was made and cooked on a very hot pan lightly covered with oil. Nan, which was made the same way as chapatti, had lightly risen dough and was then oven-dried. Paratha and poori were fried in butter along with their Bengali variety known as loochi. Dosa was a savory crepe of dough batter, lentils, and rice.

In Europe, the Renaissance brought about the beginning of culinary art that evolved. National culinary schools begin to appear. The first great chefs come onto the scene. In Italy, every region has its own type of bread. Flatbreads, especially unleavened ones, start to decline. Only in a few regions does unleavened flatbread continue being eaten by the poorest classes in society, especially in times of general shortage or famine.
Called by Giovanni Pascoli, an Italian poet and scholar, the “rough bread of Rome”, the piadina is a thin flatbread of leavened cereal grain flour mixed with lard, and cooked on a slab of fire-resistant stone. The etymology of the piadina is uncertain, though probably connected to “plaukous” from Greek, meaning “flatbread”. If such a hypothesis is accepted, the term would then stem back to the Byzantine domination (Exarchate, a Byzantine province) over Romagna, the region in Italy where piadinas come from. Piadina flatbreads in the 1500’s were made with
simple types of cereal grain, fava beans, acorns, and bran. In times of famine, sawdust and even worse were also added as fillers. With such ingredients, it was inevitable that these flatbreads couldn’t be anything else than unleavened. Even in the 1800’s, piadinas were simple and made with corn flour or a mix of corn and wheat flour.

Still at the beginning of this century, the piadina was the food of poor farmers and rural folk in Romagna. Bread was made and baked at home all over in the Romagna countryside week after week. People turned to piadinas only when bread ran out too soon and there wasn’t time to make any more.
Sometimes there was little wheat flour and so piadòt was made by mixing wheat and corn. Sometimes flour and boiled potatoes were even added.

In the sixties, it looked as though the piadina had all but been forgotten when the American trend of fast-food was spreading in Italy. In Romagna, the piadina come back into style with a slightly new mix of ingredients and way of being eaten. With the “economic boom”, Italian families began buying automobiles and were thus able to leave their cities and head for the sea on weekends. Soon stands started perking up along the streets and selling fresh piadinas made on the spot. Today piadinas, healthy and nutritious, aren’t bad and hard to digest like those in the past.
They are leavened and stuffed in many ways. Now they are eaten instead of bread and not in order to survive as before. Their recipe varies depending on the region where they are made. The most basic are with flour, water, and salt. They are thin, small, and cooked on a flat terracotta pan called a testo, in Italian. More flavorful ones are made with lard and baking soda. As well as at stands, they are sold in food stores of every kind and nobody or hardly anybody makes them anymore at home. Piadinas today are different from great-grandma’s, yet eaten warm, are still able to recall a rural world believed to be dead, however still alive in the hearts of Italians.

“My host laid on the ground his goat wool cloak, sifted the flour above, mixed it with water and salt, kneaded it, and made it into a ball. He then slapped it over a flat stone and, expertly moving it back and forth with his bare forearms, made it into a thin disk. I will never forget ‘Abed’s face. It carried a sort of grin that went from one ear to the other; it was the immense satisfaction of who, with an artist’s stroke, knew how to toss the dough in the air and make it become thinner and thinner. Lucky for me I was ‘Abed’s guest and not the ancient Egyptians’ because they had the habit of working the dough with their feet and leavening it with beer. ‘Abed didn’t leaven the dough, but put it the sun to expand. Underneath the sag, in the meantime, he lit a small fire using dry scrub and camel dung. Before placing the dough on the bottom part of the burning hot pan turned upside-down, he tore off a piece and threw it in the fire as a sign of offering. In a short while, the bread was ready. It was about 30 cm in diameter, 1 cm tall, without crust, soft, foldable, and pasty in color. I cautiously tasted it while it was still warm. The flour was neither that fine nor pure and hence crunched between my teeth. The bread was easy to break, keeping in mind that the custom didn’t allow for it to be cut. Once when I had come to visit Tel Aviv, ‘Abed saw the bread cut with a knife and asked me, “Is murdering bread allowed?” Besides, even Abraham and Jesus broke bread with their hands. After turning it into small pieces, ‘Abed took the bread and put it in a terracotta bowl, added some milk curd, and mixed it with melted butter.”
From E.E.Vardiman "Nomadi" ed. Rusconi, Milano, 1981

Sag is a type of large bowl and universal utensil among nomads.
With an opening on the top, it was used as a pot for liquid food; flipped over, it was a griddle for cooking daily bread.

“In order to feed themselves, men will make flour with barley and wheat that they will toast and knead, making nice flatbreads and loaves that
they will serve on straw or on carefully cleaned leaves…”
From "The Republic" by Plato.

“His table on the turf, with cakes of bread;
And, with his chiefs, on forest fruits he fed.
They sate; and, (not without the god's command,)
Their homely fare dispatch'd, the hungry band
Invade their trenchers next, and soon devour,
To mend the scanty meal, their cakes of flour.
Ascanius this observ'd, and smiling said:
‘See, we devour the plates on which we fed.’"
Aeneid 7, 152-159, by Virgil

“On th'earth a scanty heap of corn was spread: From this he for himself doth take as much As did his measure need to fill it up, Which ran to close on twice eight pounds in weight He goes away from here and posts himself Besides his quern,' and on a little shelf Which fixed to it for other uses did The wall support, he puts his faithful light. Then from his garment both his arms he frees; Begirt was he with skin of hairy goat And with the tail thereof he thoroughly Doth brush the stones and hopper of the mill. His hands he then doth summon to the work And shares it out to each, to serving was The left directed and the right to th' toil. This turns about in tireless circles and The surface round in rapid motion puts, And from the rapid thrusting of the stones The pounded grain is running down. At times The left relieves its wearied fellow hand, And interchanges with it turn about. Thereafter country ditties doth he sing And solaces his toil with rustic speech, And meanwhile calls on Scybale to rise... He summons her and bids her lay upon The hearth some logs wherewith to feed the fire, And boil some chilly water on the flame. As soon as toil of turning has fulfilled Its normal end, he with his hand transfers The copious meal from there into a sieve, And shakes it. On the grid the refuse stays, The real corn refined doth sink and by The holes is filtered. Then immediately He piles it on a board that's smooth, and pours Upon it tepid water, now he brought Together flour and fluid intermixed, With hardened hand he turns it o'er and o'er And having worked the liquid in, the heap He in the meantime strews with salt, and now His kneaded work he lifts, and flattens it With palms of hand to rounded cake, and it
With squares at equal distance pressed doth mark. From there he takes it to the hearth (ere this His Scybale had cleaned a fitting place), And covers it with tiles and heaps the fire
Above. And while Vulcanus, Vesta too, Perform their parts i' th' meantime, Symilus Is not inactive in the vacant hour, But other occupation finds himself; And lest the corn alone may not be found Acceptable to th' palate he prepares Some food which he may add to it. For him No frame for smoking meat was hung above The hearth, and backs and sides of bacon cured With salt were lacking, but a cheese transfixed By rope of broom through mid-circumference Was hanging there, an ancient bundle, too, Of dill together tied.”
Taken from “Moretum” falsely attributed to Virgil.
Translation by Joseph J. Mooney

"Bread baked on embers is heavy and difficult to digest,
because it isn’t cooked evenly. What has been baked in a
little oven or in a little stove causes dyspepsia and is indigestible.
Bread baked on a brazier or in a pan, thanks to mixing
with oil, instead makes excretion easier, even though the steam let out
while cooking is rather unwholesome. Bread baked in large
ovens, on the other hand, excels in all areas of good quality since it has a good
taste, is good for the stomach, is easily digestible, and absorbs very well…”
Excerpt attributed to Galeno taken from “La tavola degli antichi” (in Italian) by Nico Valerio, pg. 85
Oscar Mondadori, Milan 1989

“We manual workers didn’t have ovens. We went to bake bread in some farmer’s home close to us; otherwise we went to the public oven.
We made a reservation for ourselves first because in a day there were three or four people that had to bake bread like us. We brought it ready from home and heat the oven with reed that we pulled back so the oven would stay white: it took about an hour and then we put the bread inside.
We did this once every eight days. The evening before, my mom made alvadur in the matra: dough made of hard bread that she soaked in salted water, then mixed with flour until a nice, big ball was formed that had to leaven the amount of flour that was there; to make twelve or thirteen pieces of bread, an alvadur of about two or three kilos was needed. We made “pagnòc”, “tir”, “ciop” (local kinds of bread); when the pieces were done [being shaped], we put them on a cutting board covered with a white scarf and some larger covers above. [The dough] stayed there
for an hour and a half until it had risen and afterwards we carried it to the oven. When it was baked, we carried it back home on a board or in a basket. It needed to last us for eight days though sometimes, depending on our hunger, it was all gone just after six days and so we either went to borrow some from neighbors or we made ourselves piadas: they weren’t made of anything! Water, salt, white flour and we always baked them on a gridiron.”
Excerpt taken from “La memoria del pane. Vicende alimentari di un paese: Sant’Alberto di Ravenna” by M.G. Feletti – S. Pasi Capelli Editore, Bologna, 1981.