Pâinea noastra cea de toate zilele ...

Se pare ca am rezolvat misterul atractiei altminteri de neexplicat intre români si francezi.

E pâinea, doamnelor si domnilor !

Cei, care ca mine, plecati demult in pribegie, au gustat de toate si din toate, ... mincaruri exotice, rafinate, sofisticate, pregatite de renumiti chefs "cordon bleu", ... mai devreme sau mai târziu, au realizat ca cea mai imbatatoare combinatie pentru palatul bucal, este pâinea crustill!anta cu unt si apoi, fie ce-o fi: sare, telemea cu rosioare, dulcetica ...

Se pare ca si francezii gindesc la fel. Iata ce zic unii dintre ei:
"Do you think it is possible to be full of tenderness when you do not have enough bread to eat?" Abbé Prévost (1697 - 1763), Histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut
"Stale bread isn't hard; the hard part is living without bread."Paul Claudel (1868- 1955)

si nu numai francezii:
"Poilâne is my favourite living Frenchman!" Salvador Dali, 1977
"It isn't bread that feeds you; it is life and the spirit that feed you through bread."Angelus Silesius, Der Cherubinischer Wandersmann

A aparut de curind si o carte, "GOOD BREAD IS BACK. A contemporary history of French bread, the way it is made, and the people who make it" by Steven L. Kaplan.

Iata si recenzia, care incepe asa:

"To be a baker’s boy in eighteenth-century Paris must have been pretty close to hell. You were effectively a slave, both to your master and to the intricate demands of sourdough fermentation. The working “day” began close to midnight. Wearing rough, uncomfortable underwear made from old flour sacks, you were forced to knead as much as 200 lb of dough at a time, using nothing but your hands and – in desperation – your feet. This kneading took place not once but many times over the night, usually in a clammy cellar too dark for you to see what you were doing, and so hot that the dough sometimes melted before it had risen. The baker’s boy in charge of kneading was known as le geindre, the groaner, on account of the blood-curdling noises he made as he worked. When you were finally granted rest, sometime in the morning, you were obliged to sleep in the blinding heat of the bakery. After three hours, you were forced to wake up again, to minister to the sourdough starter, which, like a newborn child, required round-the-clock feeding. In 1788, the journalist Louis-Sébastien Mercier described how unhealthy bakers’ apprentices looked. Unlike butchers’ boys, who were robust and ruddy, bakers’ boys were flour-coated wretches, huddling in doorways, haggard and white."

All this misery was required to serve the panimania of the French. Bread signified more to the French than it did to other nations. It was not just subsistence; it was a sacred matter, as well as an affair of state.

The Communion wafer was holy, but so was the ordinary white sourdough loaf of everyday life. To turn a loaf upside down was considered bad luck, akin to sacrilege.

Before eating, it was customary to trace the sign of the cross over the bread using a knife. In 1789, the Encyclopédie méthodique noted that “most people” in France “believe[d] they would die of hunger if there [were] no bread” – even if other food was available. The “tyranny of bread”, as Steven Laurence Kaplan has it, tied the French together.
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Lumea larga e plina de muzee dedicate pâinii.