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Results of the Bread Survey

The aim of this study is to find out the motivation, process and times in Third Age Learning, therefore this is a way the teachers try to understand the methods to be followed in The Elderly University. The results of our study will be sent to all the Universities for Senior Students, since there is no other study in this learning field.
The questionnaire analyzed by our students is divided into two parts: eating habits and the importance of bread in the life of Italian people.

Methods and Limits
The questionnaires that were completed and given back to us were 620.
The males were 240 and the females 380. The interviews were 578 to the same
people who gave us the questionnaires. The interviewed people were invited to a meeting with a senior student (the students were 12 altogether, and were prepared to conduct the interviews
taking notes during the interviewing process). This is also the way the proverbs were collected and at the same time when the interviews were conducted.
There are two methodologies of the same importance in social studies: the quantitative system and the qualitative system which can be used as a prescientific moment as regards the quantitative one. We give priority to a methodology according to the aims of our study.
Initially, in our research, we chose a quantitative method since we were going to study bread and its use. Firstly, we studied the main changes which influenced all the habits, comparing the differences in age, sex, territory. Then we built up a standard representative of the universe we were searching out and wrote down a questionnaire following the answers we had be given. Secondly, we switched to a qualitative methodology using the way of interviews, memories about living conditions and habits.
Anyway, we must realize that, in spite of the methodology and items we chose, the results will show a quite valid, but always partial, perspective of reality. That tiny bit of reality is just a very poor section of the multidimensional reality itself.

From homemade bread to industrial bread
"A breadless dinner table is a bare table". This statement recurs in all the significant interviews to women. Till the thirties in every, or almost every family, people used homemade bread which turned out to be incomparable in taste and quality.
In the country, nearly all the houses had their own oven while in town there were bakeries where people could cook their own bread leaving in payment a "mica", that is a large loaf of bread of about one kilo. A mica was one of the twenty or thirty loaves which made up the batch, that is "cotta", the amount of bread a family needed in a month.
Women thought that dawn was the best moment to start making bread as they believed that the sunrise could affect the flour rising in a positive way.
Moreover, flour wheat was to be milled in August to prevent it from moths all the year through. The drier the wheat was, the better the flour was.
Some women also used to add boiled potatoes to the flour to make a very soft, light bread. In order to save money, some peasants mixed flour and broad beans, but this very tasty kind of bread was rather hard to digest. Moreover the so called "pan de' mistura", that is a mixed-flour bread, was made of different kinds of flour as wheat, maize, bran and rye.
Once a month, women used to make a bread for their children just adding oil or butter, sugar and raisins to the dough.
Ovens were provided with a small hole to keep the inside moistureless and from which a gorgeous smell could expand through the whole village. People can still remember the unforgettable scent of homemade bread, the flavour of which depends on the way it is made and cooked.
To carry their bread home they used a large breadbasket which was later hanging from the ceiling in order to defend it from mice. A rope pulled the basket up and down. This way of stocking bread is related to the habit of filling large baskets with Xmas cakes and candies which were to last till Epiphany. Later and mostly in towns people used to keep bread in linen bags.
"Schissöela " or "chisso" was another cake usually made in the country by mixing dough, maize, eggs, raisins and "graton", that is pork fried fat. After giving a shape to this pastry, they used to oil the top and trace a cross with the finger on it. Then, after heating the hearth with slack, they cooked it. A girl able to make "schissöela" was ready to get married, they used to say. In the past, bread was hold sacred, so there was the habit of sweeping any tiny crumb and mothers taught their children to do that telling them that even Jesus got off this horse to pick a morsel of bread up. This was a way to teach children how to save.
According to a popular belief, eating hot bread ment the loss of teeth. A "focaccia", that is a flat, salted kind of bread-cake was made every time a family used to make bread. This habit is still on with bakers since they are always provided with "focaccia" besides bread.
Whenever there is nothing to eat, people in the country usually fry bread and garlic which they then season with salt and pepper. This habit is getting more and more trendy in Italy, since there are so many snack bars where you are served a slice of toast dressed with oil, tomato, soft cheese and herbs on top. The name of this tasty and tempting food is "bruschetta", from which "bruschetteria", the snack bar where they are available.
Bread dunked in wine was one of the favourite snacks or even meals for farmers, they also liked to have bread and macaroni or bread and salami as a first course and bread dunked in wine as a second course if the family could afford two courses. In people's opinion bread was itself a complete meal.
There are two different kinds of bread depending on its quality: hard bread and soft bread. The former is used for shaping long, rolled up or twisted loaves and bread-sticks, while the latter is for small rolls and bread cakes.
In the country, besides bread, also "polenta", that is cooked maize flour, was widely used dressed with "graton", cabbages and broad beans.
The above-mentioned qualities of bread were in use with peasants even before the first half of the nineteenth century, but dough was so poorly made that the bread in a short time became so hard that it was to be cut only with a knife specially made for that purpose. White bread was only for really ill people. The well-to-do families used to eat a kind of bread made from broad beans, while wheat bread was only for the wealthy.
The habit of making "schiacciata" a large cake of bread cooked in the embers, is still in fashion in many regions of Italy. An example can be the "ciope" or the "fugassen" made of bread dough on the "ciapa dar camen" in the countryside surrounding Voghera.

The postwar period
The people we interviewed still remember bread rationing and the ration card they had to use to buy food. Bread was too expensive and only a few could afford buying it.
An old primary-school teacher tells about a worried mother who promised her a loaf of bread, a "ciopa de pan" if she let her son pass.
During the postwar period almost every family used to make their own bread every week owing to the increasing use of cheap stoves provided with an oven. This habit was progressively supplanted by the flourishing of traditional bakeries the bread of which changed from place to place.
Left-over bread was never thrown away since it was used to feed animals in the country and for making cheap, plain cakes or dunked in milk in town.
Apart from the fact that the mother used to send him as a child to the baker's, no male interviewee can produce special memories about bread. Sometimes they remember the book where the baker used to write the daily cost of the bread they bought and which was to be paid for weekly or monthly. The peculiar names of some kinds of bread they used to buy often occurs the mind of some of them.
On the contrary, the elderly female interviewees can well remember the way bread was homemade as well as a lot of sayings on bread (see enclosure). Like most men, even young women, still attending high schools, have no special memories on this item.
The questionnaires filled in up to now pick out the following data:
SEX: female 51,61% male 48,39%
AGE: between 41 and 50 14,52%
51 and 60 22,58%
61 and 70 27,42%
over 70 14,52%
FOOD AND MEALS pleasant 60,66%
necessary 39,34%
at fixed times 87,10%
properly laid table 88,71%
rustled up meals 11,29%
talking to the family 54,10%
watching tv 39,34%
mass-media influence 17,74%
after family habits 14,52%
vegetarians 3,23%
meals at home 96,72%
personally cooked 48,39%
number of meals three a day
quantity of bread two rolls a day 35,48%
a roll a day 35,48%
motivations for the use of bread health 61,02%
taste 54,10%
SHOPPING supermarkets 63,33%
Times twice a week 30,65%
when needed 48,39%

From this questionnaire we can realize that nowadays bread intake is rather modest in spite of the fact that bread is quite appreciated and reckoned as an essential food on our dinner tables.

NOTE:
Interviewees: their characteristics
pensioners 38,71%
workers 43,55%
primary education 16,13%
secondary school education 25,81%
higher education 50,00%
graduates 8,06%
live with the family 77,42%
single 9,68%
watching tv every day 2 hours a day average
go out every day 69,35%
go on Summer holidays 82,26%
meet people 62,91%