Bread, an ancient rite

Bread, an ancient rite

In the vast territory of Cilento, of which Trentinara is part, besides the historical, archaeological and naturalistic evidences, have survived usages and customs that have tight bonds with an ancient world.

Communities are steeped in cultures stratified during the centuries and variedly diffused in every angle of the different rural villages. Making bread is one of these from time immemorial.

Bread has always been the most important food for the Cilento population, almost having a sacred function.

Wheat and bread, therefore, were an indivisible binomial for the community of Trentinara. Baking bread in the house has been an indispensable practice in all families for centuries. In every house the oven had a preponderant importance on every other room: women attended to breadmaking, transmitting their knowledge and experience from generation to generation, so that this essential activity at the basis of the families’ nourishment was perpetuated in time.

In the collection of letters kept at the State archive of Salerno is found mention of some Mount Frumentario (Frumentarious) and of three mills active during XIX century, all positioned along the course of river Solofrone, whose waters operated the millstones, some of which are still visible in the ruins of these ancient mills.