Bread used to be central to our lives

Bread used to be central to our lives, largely because it gobbled up so much of our incomes. In the nineteenth century, an average British farm worker in the county of Somerset spent more than twice as much on bread as on rent (£11 14s per annum as against £5 4s).... Bread's lowly status [now] can be seen from the fact that so much of it is discarded. Our ancestors used up every scrap of a loaf, and put any stale bits to good use: think of the thick, oily bread soups of Italy and Portugal or the bread stuffings of America

B. Wilson, The way we eat now (2019), 116