FWIS3

For one of my fictional religions, they have a day of never-ending bread. The culture has several tribes that have united to live in peace. They each have some of their own culture, which is represented in their different types of bread. One might be sourdough, one might be rye, or whole wheat, or bleached, etc, All different colors and flavors. Once a year, at least, they come together with their doughs and braid them together. But instead of baking many loaves, they bake one continuous loaf by braiding new strands of dough into it as they slowly slide it through the oven. As it comes out is is cut and everyone gets a piece with all the strands represented.

This was preceded earlier in the year by a holiday, similar to the Jewish holiday of Passover and the Removal of Chametz, where they celebrate the "miracle" of yeast. They remove anything that had yeast, and then allow their doughs to be recolonized by the yeast in the air. Except by the sourdough sect, who might have a special dispensation. Or maybe it's a unification thing that the yeast priests of the combined cultural religion maintain the eternal dough as a combined heritage.

Later, they convert the bread to beer as yet another extension of the yearly yeastly cycle. I like the harmony of unity in diversity, the old working with the new, and time being more than merely a cycle, but working linearly toward a future hope.

Tarragon wrote:For one of my fictional religions, they have a day of never-ending bread. The culture has several tribes that have united to live in peace. They each have some of their own culture, which is represented in their different types of bread. One might be sourdough, one might be rye, or whole wheat, or bleached, etc, All different colors and flavors. Once a year, at least, they come together with their doughs and braid them together. But instead of baking many loaves, they bake one continuous loaf by braiding new strands of dough into it as they slowly slide it through the oven. As it comes out is is cut and everyone gets a piece with all the strands represented.

This was preceded earlier in the year by a holiday, similar to the Jewish holiday of Passover and the Removal of Chametz, where they celebrate the "miracle" of yeast. They remove anything that had yeast, and then allow their doughs to be recolonized by the yeast in the air. Except by the sourdough sect, who might have a special dispensation. Or maybe it's a unification thing that the yeast priests of the combined cultural religion maintain the eternal dough as a combined heritage.

Later, they convert the bread to beer as yet another extension of the yearly yeastly cycle. I like the harmony of unity in diversity, the old working with the new, and time being more than merely a cycle, but working linearly toward a future hope.

why is each tribe limited to a single bread?
the removal of chametz is hardly a celebration of yeast. my observation that yeast had been added to the dough but there was no time to let it rise so that getting rid of anything that contained or had contained yeast really wasn't called for never went over well.

code monkey wrote:why is each tribe limited to a single bread?
the removal of chametz is hardly a celebration of yeast. my observation that yeast had been added to the dough but there was no time to let it rise so that getting rid of anything that contained or had contained yeast really wasn't called for never went over well.

It's not a single bread per tribe but a single recipe. The tribes each make enough dough batches to last a whole day of baking or to serve everyone. The doughs are staggered as they are braided in, so that they don't all end at the same place. Thus, it's one continuous loaf.

In my story, the tribes were geographically separated for plot reasons and married with locals, then they came back together for plot reasons in a grand unification many generations later. So, each tribe had evolved their own cultural history and identity in the interim.

The setting for the story in which I set the religion is many millenia ago. They discovered yeast but don't understand it, or if they do, they still treat it as a miracle or at least a ritual. It's actually a backstory for another writing project set in the future.