Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/513060
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 17 MAY 2015 16 News HISTORIAN Noel Buttigieg, a teacher at the Verdala Interna- tional School in Pembroke, is vis- ibly enthusiastic about his PhD research into bread, and I don't even have to ask an introductory question for him to begin rattling off potential offshoot subjects for our feature. We could talk about bread as a marker of identity, he suggests. Or how food "commu- nicates things", or even his in- volvement in the local branch of the 'slow food' movement, whose tenets he's trying to pass on to his young students through practical exercises in which they plant their own food… He also comes across as re- soundingly jolly, at least when he's prompted to talk about his pet subject. But as we sit in the play- ground of the Verdala Internation- al School – a preserved colonial structure surrounded by healthy greenery in spring, allowing for a pleasant breeze to weave its way through – it's hard to imagine his workdays being particularly pain- ful… and it puts paid to MEP Mar- lene Farrugia's suggestion to locate the proposed 'American Univer- sity' on a similar site, rather than unspoilt agricultural land in Zon- qor Point. For brevity's sake, I suggest that we focus our conversation on his immediate research – the produc- tion and distribution of bread in 18th century Malta, and how this impacted the social make-up of the country at the time. Immediately shifting to storyteller-historian mode, Buttigieg sets about paint- ing an exciting backdrop for this most domestic of foods: spinning a yarn of smugglers, irate Grand- masters and chocolate-chasing bounty hunters. Attack of the grain pirates "There's an interesting docu- ment that dates back to the 16th century. Its writer suggests that Although bread has been a staple of many a Maltese kitchen, historian Noel Buttigieg, whose research focuses on bread distribution and production in the 18th century, tells TEODOR RELJIC that its form, and the way it reached people, was hardly ever a static affair Breaking bread, across Noel Buttigieg: Bread retains a symbolic power to this day PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAY ATTARD AND DANIEL CILIA