In the later times in the Roman Empire, bread replaced porridge as the most important part of the Roman diet. Bread was the food of ‘citizens’ of Rome, a status commonly achieved by successful military service.
The ancient Roman bread was a flat, hard cake called ‘libum’ which was baked in hot embers and ashes and which continued in favor even when wheat-bread and leaven was introduced.
In later days of the Roman Empire, bread was distributed as a right to the citizens of Rome.
The professional baker appears around 174 BC and by that time throughout the Empire most middle and lower class Romans relied upon commercial bakeries for their bread. Also, Rome began to important grain from territories in its empire because Rome could not produce enough grain for its growing population.
Rome politicians used bread from the centralized bakeries as political capital to buy votes of the plebeians.
According to Pliny the Elder and Seneca that the poor ate inferior kinds of bread, while the rich consumed bread of the finest quality. The poorer citizens would have to grind their own corn, preferred wheat meal porridge or groats to bread.
In Roman Palestine, the poor often ate nothing but cheap bread. For them bread seems to have been more important than gruel or porridge.
In fact, both cereal products were often eaten in combination, i.e. gruel was scooped out of the pot with a piece of bread.
Romans in Gauls (modern French) discovered that adding the froth from beer to bread dough made especially light, well leavened bread. This is the beginning of the use of a controlled yeast source for making bread doughs.
Bread in the Roman Empire
