Baba Who? Babalú!

Santería priests work with bread in many contexts. There are only a few things that every oricha will eat: fruit, coconuts, the tamales called ekó, and bread. Seventeen rolls on a plate is a common offering to Babalú-Ayé, and in some house you even see them nailed to the inside of the door frame as a concrete prayer for a constant supply of food to enter the house. They are also placed in the bottom of the awán basket when they honor Babalú. What could be more essential, more basic, than bread--that ancient mixture of wheat, water, leavening, and fire? Bread remains "the staff of life." And as a culinary imperative, it holds a special place in the imagination of many cultures. Bread is the most basic food, the sine qua non of Western cuisine. Some writers have even seen bread as the best symbol for human beings' transformational impact on nature. It is the raw, and then cooked, as Levi-Strauss pointed out. As a basic building block of the Cuban diet, its inclusion i...