Baking our way through survival

I'm always interested in the mental images that, if you presented them in photographic form to another person, would appear innocuous, but for you, are intrinsically linked to loneliness: a vista from an apartment window that's no longer shared; a view from a pew in a church you abandoned ; a panoramic shot of a crowd in which you feel completely isolated. But last weekend, as I stood in the grocery store — surrounded by empty aisles, long lines and printed notices that read "Dear customer, please note that toilet paper packs are limited to 2 units per person" — and scanned the shelves for bread flour and packets of yeast, I thought differently of that image. The word "companion," for example, comes from the Latin words "con" and "panis" — "with bread," or someone with whom you share bread. Research suggests that social eating may have evolved as a mechanism for facilitating social bonding; and considering that archeologists have discovered evidence of flatbread-making at a 14,000-year-old Black Desert dig site, it's likely bread was a consistent part of that evolution. At first glance, it would be easy to dismiss this uptick in bread baking as a symptom of boredom or an extension of prepper-panic, but I think it's more than that.