.
There is no doubt that bread
is the most present food at table worldwide. Compared to this, we know
quite little about it: symbolical and ethnological meanings, cultural influence
trough history, bread varieties, baking methods and, in general, about
its value for our everyday life.
Many aspects of the respective
Bread heritage, as a subject of cuisine culture, have
not been researched yet. Meanwhile traditional recipes have been
forgotten or are in danger of doing so. The main reason is that local cuisine
and traditional eating habits are rapidly being replaced by a standardized
international cuisine forced quick socio-economic changes thus promoting
the rise of industrial food and dominant chains of bakery stores.
Tell me what you eat,
and I'll tell you who you are. (J.A.Brillat-Savarin).
The culinary culture does
not exist as something apart, for itself and by itself. On the contrary,
it is a necessary a matter and confirmation of a larger cultural and social
identity and as such, reflects the hidden multilevel structure of these
identities!
Cuisine is not only
a common matter of social identity, it is pride! But, presentation of culinary
culture most often means national cuisine, and here we have again
the simplified image of cultural identity in the form of label.
Cuisine is linked
with variations on the concrete principles of identity: with natural environment,
with the social status of the family and the family status of an individual,
with the sacred and the profane with sickness and health, with masculinity
and femininity, with childhood and maturity.
This is why culinary culture
always has a moral and symbolic side, whether we eat to live or live
to eat. (Socrates)
Bread - The World's Heritage
is envisaged as a mosaic cultural research project, taking also into account
the role bread plays in everyday life.
Story about bread is a story
about human!
There is for example an urgent
need to prevent further losses of traditional bread recipes connected with
cultural identity. One effective way of safeguarding the bread heritage
is by collecting, recording, and archiving them. Parallel, the bearers
of the bread heritage should continue to acquire further knowledge
and skills and transmit them to the next generations. These efforts are
indispensable conditions in order to raise consciousness for this basic
good of men's everyday live.
With those aims in mind
we started to work on the long-term project.
The project Bread - The
World's Heritage officially figures as a sub-project of the European
Food Project of
ERICArts
- European Research Institute for Comparative Cultural Policy and the Arts,
which will be carried out
by its members and other
partner institutions step by step in the coming years.
Coordinator of the project
is Dimitrije Vujadinovic.
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