Bread

People in most countries eat bread, and people have eaten it for about ten thousand years. It is made from three things — grain, water, and very small living things — and from time.

How it is made

First the grain: people take a tall thin plant's seeds and press them between stones, many times, and what they have then is white and very small — smaller than salt.

Then the living things. In the air all around you there are living things very much smaller than you can see. Put the pressed grain in water, and put it someplace that is not cold, and these living things fall into it and start to eat. As they eat, they breathe out air, and the air makes small holes all through it, and the bread-to-be grows big and light.

Then the burning: put it in a very hot place, and it becomes bread — brown and hard where the hot air touched it, white and light inside. The small living things die in the hot place. They made the bread what it is, and no one thanks them.

The kinds

Each country makes its own kind. One country makes it long and thin, and its people buy it when the day starts. Other countries make it round, or sweet, or flat. Flat bread was first: bread with no living things in it, thin and hard — the kind you can make quickly and carry far. Soldiers carried it, and people going out on the big waters carried it.

What it means

In some countries, the word for bread and the word for food are the same word. And in many countries, to eat bread with a person is to say: we are good, you and I.