Food and dining in the Roman Empire and a pesto-like preparation, somewhat similar to pizza or focaccia. Maintaining a bread oven is labor-intensive and requires space, so apartment dwellers probably prepared their dough at home, then had it baked in a communal oven. Mills and commercial ovens, usually combined in a bakery complex, were considered so vital to the wellbeing of Rome that several religious festivals honored the deities who furthered these processes—and even the donkeys who toiled in the mills. Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, was seen as complementary to Ceres, the goddess of grain, and donkeys were garlanded and given a rest on the
The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth is a non-fiction food book by Roy Andries De Groot Published in 1973, the book is about the time de Groot spent at an inn called L'Auberge de l'Atre Fleuri in St-Pierre-de-Chartreuse in the Savoy region of France, and about the good meals he ate there. The book addresses the logic of constructing a meal of several dishes so that they harmonize with one another, to the use of primarily local and seasonal ingredients to contribute to this harmony, and also an internal harmony within individual dishes. It