Blessed with bread

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

To Italians, bread is life. With 250 varieties across the country, it’s eaten with almost every meal. Its importance speaks to national values of community, tradition, quality and - above all - religion.

Australian-Japanese food writer Emiko Davies takes a tasty journey into the spiritual significance of bread in Italy, her adopted home. In the west of Sicily, residents honour Saint Joseph by constructing intricate sculptural breads, adorning altars with baked symbols, and staging a ritualised feast attended by the entire community. On the coast of Puglia, locals queue to receive blessed loaves in celebration of Saint Anthony. Finally, with food historian Fabrizia Lanza, she reflects on the origins of religious superstitions surrounding bread, and what the nation's diverse culinary traditions tell us about faith in Italy today.

Presenter: Emiko Davies Producer: Jude Shapiro Executive Producer: Jack Howson Production Coordinator: Ieva Sabaliauskaite

A Peanut & Crumb production for BBC World Service

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm currently inside the Church of San Mineato.
0:06.4	This is the little Tuscan town where I live just outside of Florence.
0:12.7	It's very, very quiet. There's only a couple people in here.
0:18.2	I'm on my way to the Museum of the Duomo, which is just next door.
0:23.9	One of my favourite religious paintings is in there, and I wanted to take you to see it.
0:33.1	So the painting I wanted to show you is a Lorenzo Leipi painting.
0:39.6	He was a Florentine artist of the 1600s.
0:43.1	It's titled Jesus' Blessing of the Bread.
0:47.6	And it's a very, very simple painting.
0:49.4	There's Jesus Christ wearing a red gown and a blue robe and the angel is presenting him with this
0:58.8	loaf of bread on a silver tray. Just a really ordinary round, a country style loaf. You can see a
1:09.2	little peak of like the white crumb.
1:12.4	It's like this really essential, very rustic, basic food
1:18.5	is perfectly elevated to something revered and sacred.
1:30.3	This is the documentary from the BBC World Service, with me Emiko Davies, a food writer and cookbook author.
1:38.4	For Heart and Soul, exploring personal approaches to spirituality around the world,
1:43.6	I'm touring my adopted home of Italy and the Catholic faith
1:47.0	by eating lots of bread.
1:51.8	Bread was always there.
1:54.4	It was something to thank the gods for.
2:00.0	Bread has taken on meaning in almost all corners of life here.
2:04.5	Beyond the act of Holy Communion, where it symbolizes the body of Christ,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.