I was taught to do the same. For whenever I feel more formal, I have individual butter knives to do the spreading with! And a "master" knife with the butter dish.

I suspect that they don't cut the bread all the way through as it takes more time. If anyone's cut a loaf of artisan bread, it's fairly easy to slice it down, but then to cut the bottom crust....it's more effort. I suppose it looks less industrial that way too, but it's certainly not convenient for the patrons.

My fraternal Grandmother was the only "civilized" member of our family. How she ever got mixed up with the rest is beyond my comprehension. But she would try to teach me and my sister table etiquette on the rare occasion that she managed to have us to herself but the effort was futile. By the time she got through handing out the rules and regulations every time we moved our hands in the direction of the plate we were so beaten down we couldn't eat it was so stressful. That was back in the day when you were supposed to follow an adult's instructions to the letter without any back-talk. I could never understand why I couldn't just eat everything with the same fork and why did I have to put the fork down on the plate after each mouthful of food??? I guess that's why I'm always so fascinated watching the meal scenes in "Downton Abbey" with all the fancy manners and clothes and such - what a different world that was!

I've heard of that rule but only when it was mentioned somewhere a few years ago. So for most of my six decades I've been ignorant of it. Perhaps if I ever attend an ultra-formal dinner I'll remember it and understand why everyone's looking at me funny!

I wouldn’t want to eat something someone else has touched but I don’t care how someone butters their bread.

I break off pieces of my bread/roll, butter and eat. I have never noticed nor do I care how others eat their bread. Whatever floats your boat.

Not to be disrespectful but the "communal bread" phrase made me laugh. I've been in more than a few bar-b-que places in TX where any bread you had was still in the now opened plastic package it came in from the supermarket. To get your share, any and everyone was just expected to reach in and pull out however many slices you wanted.

I've tried a lot of things that maybe weren't that sanitary at the time and tasted some stuff I'd never EVER try again but sharing a loaf of bread after everyone from restaurant open to close had their hands in it... no way even for me.

I will say that if the bread is hard and chewy, it is better to break it off a bite at a time rather than try to bite off a piece. So maybe that is where the custom or ‘rule’ of breaking off a piece of bread and buttering it before eating came from.

In my view there are people who would put their fingers in their mouth doing the bite-at-a-time, which is even more unsanitary than breaking off a piece from a common loaf.

Yeah I don't know why restaurants serve entire loaves of bread. I don't know how someone is supposed to cut a piece without touching the rest of it (I have never seen a towel with the bread).

This is how Macaroni Grill serves their bread. How do you get a piece without touching it?

If it's just me and DH, one of us will cut all the pieces. If it's someone I know well, I'll ask if they mind if I touch it, or I can try to stab it with a fork to stabilize while I cut it, but that probably isn't good manners either. :)

I butter my entire roll at once most of the time. If I'm at a formal or fine dining establishment I will do a bite at a time but it's so inefficient, haha.

I remember walking around a computer room once eating a big slice of home made, dark wheat bread, with butter slathered over the top, in a baggie where my fingers held it. A coworker complained. Said it was "meatloaf".....and my manners were horrible. lol I would do it again. :0) But not at a table with others watching, in a dinning situation. Go figure....? In my book of etiquette, there are two sets of rules. The sack lunch rules, break ALL others. lol

I guess I'm uncouth then. I take a roll, break it apart, and butter each side, then eat it. Now that I know the "proper" way to eat it, that's nice trivia to know, but I'm still going to eat it the way I always have. I haven't been thrown out of a restaurant yet. Lol!

As always I have an even more arcane point of etiquette. You aren't supposed to eat the roll at all at a formal dinner. In a truly formal setting the hard roll is wrapped in your napkin. you remove it and set it aside and put your napkin on your lap. That is the only time you touch the roll. Bizarre right? I think it emphasizes that the rich don't need to fill up on mere bread. If you must then you do tear off small pieces. You are supposed to eat toast the same way-tear off a piece and dab with a blob of jelly. The standards of cutting small pieces of food go back to the middle ages. When people shared food from dishes you grasp the piece of meat from the roast with your hand and cut it off with your knife, put it on your bread slice plate and cut it into bite sized pieces that you picked up one piece at a time and dipped in salt and sauce and eat. No forks. No one grabbed a leg and chewed on it like you see in movies.

I'm even more uncouth. To save calories, I tear the guts out of the center of the slice of bread and just eat the crust because that's my favorite part of the bread.

I still remember when I found out that one isn't supposed to crumble crackers into their soup using their hands. I was shocked! I still do it that way at home, but I don't do it out in public. ;-)

Etiquette was created to make people feel better, more at ease.

Actually etiquette was created to make some people feel superior to others.

All the rules are/were made up on someone’s whim and they change on a whim.

i doubt the reason we eat bread one small piece at a time had anything to do with cutting meat from a roast in the Middle Ages. Most people in the US come from different places/regions originally which all had their own rules and manners

i think (possibly, I’m wrong )most etiquette we now use come from the Victorians who were very class-conscious, the rules let others know they weren’t from the right class.

"Actually etiquette was created to make some people feel superior to others."

Yes, of course. Feel free to go ahead eating with your fingers, chewing with your mouth opening, talking when there's food in your mouth and wiping your mouth with your sleeve. You'll show those arrogant twits what you think of them. And they'll find an appropriate way to return the gesture to express their thoughts about your lack of manners.

Well of course there is etiquette and then there is etiquette...

Does using one fork over another does not gross anyone out, yet it can show you weren’t raised properly .

people still get upset about men wearing hats inside or at a restaurant, what does that have to do with hygiene or again what you are eluding to Elmer, which is being gross.

we were taught it was not ok to wear a hat indoors but there is no reason for that rule except it was arbitrarily made up.

Etiquette was probably the wrong word - how to maneuver and handle bread is more a matter of proper table and eating manners and habits. I agree that many of the arbitrary "rules" of etiquette are out-dated and perhaps were rarely useful or followed.

This has nothing to do with what to say in a thank you card, or what color shoes to wear in April.

Hats in the house? Forget etiquette, that's kind of like keeping your winter heavy jacket and gloves on when entering a heated home. It's tacky.

Bread eaten by people who sat at a table which could be anyone from the lowliest servant to the Lord at his personal table, was managed by the small loaves being cut into slices and the slices cut into fingers and those you were allowed to bit a piece off of after dipping. Way back when anything that couldn't be eaten with a spoon was cut into pieces. Talk about not liking to eat a piece of bread that some one had touched, people ate out of the same communal bowl by dipping into it with their spoon. Bread could be used to wipe the spoon for the fastidious. Most of the bread wasn't eaten by the better off, after being used as a plate and a napkin it was thrown into the ginormous bowl that held the leftovers and the lot all dumped together including left over pheasant from the high table was shared out to the poor.

Victorians didn't invent pretensions, I think that the level that pretentiousness started was just lower. They are the ones who invented the infinite variety of silverware. It was indeed invented to show how wealthy you were. Still it was considered poor taste to have more than four utensils on either side of the plate on a place setting.

Manners wise it is better manners to not "notice" when someone errs during a meal. Therefor the person sniggering over someone using the 'wrong' fork or actually eating their roll would be less mannered than the one who did so.

Eating back in the day was fraught. When you ate at a Great House you would be assigned a "Mess" or group of four to six people of appropriate status to you with whom you shared food, and within that group you had to know where you fit in so as to not reach for your share out of turn-most important going first and if you were relatively no one you had to judge what part of the meat you should take and when. You only got relatively small bits at a time and no gulping down more than your share of the pottage. This would be thirteenth/fourteenth century. Talk about complicated.

I really like Patriciae_gw's way of looking at etiquette/manners issues which I've quoted below. It's kind and shows class, something many people are lacking. Of course, if the manners are so bad as to be gross or unhygienic, one can always choose not to associate with those particular people. Personally, I'd include correcting the spelling and grammar of others in there as well.

"Manners wise it is better manners to not "notice" when someone errs
during a meal. Therefor the person sniggering over someone using the
'wrong' fork or actually eating their roll would be less mannered than
the one who did so."

Regarding hats being worn inside, this is purely anecdotal, but in my experience most of the men wearing hats (baseball caps specifically) are balding or bald which may explain their reluctance to remove their hats.

Why thank you Dawn. I am more or less quoting Miss Manners. I wish I was personally as mannered as I ought to be. A really well mannered person just doesn't "notice". I at least try not to say anything to anyone who would quote me. I was very properly brought us as a Southern Lady and considered to be a fail but I know the rules. Maybe that is why I find social history so interesting. The things that different cultures consider to be bad manners and the unbelievably complex sets of rules that people used to be expected to live by in Britain are so interesting. If you read old novels you find people are considered to be vulgar for doing the most perplexing things. Vulgar used to simply mean common but of course you didn't want to be common right?

Actually etiquette was created to make some people feel superior to others.

I don't know where you are getting that, but that isn't the case.

Does using one fork over another does not gross anyone out, yet it can show you weren’t "raised properly" .

You are kidding us, right? The purpose of etiquette is to make people feel at ease. and in my opinion, those who were "raised properly" will make efforts to be a good host to their guests. To say that someone was not raised properly if they are not familiar with different kinds of forks makes the ethnocentric assumption that your system of etiquette trumps those who have been raised with different ways.

" unbelievably complex sets of rules that people used to be expected to live by in Britain are so interesting. "

The UK is the sole country in Western Europe where the entrenched class system continues to handicap and dominate economic, social, and political conduct within the society. It's one of the reasons why the country has lagged the rest of Western Europe so significantly in recovery and growth since WWII. And it isn't the whole of the UK so much as it is the English who have their you know whats in their you know wheres. The upper classes aren't necessarily the wealthy ones either, many families have been impoverished in the last century plus. It doesn't stop them from being pompous and acting entitled.

"those who were raised properly will make efforts to be a good host to their guests."

What does "raised properly" mean? I've known some people who have used that phrase when referring to themselves and others who were anything BUT socially adept and anything but well adapted to their particular milieu.

In the context I used, raised properly would be those who welcome and make their guests at ease.

I think the bread or rolls that are on my plate are my own business. If I butter the whole slice or one bite at a time harms no-one. It is not crude or vulgar to do either. Perhaps is it odd to be that fixated on someone else's plate.

I never knew the rule about buttering a piece at a time. Someone told me about it when I was in my 40s! My own grandparents, both sides are from villages in Europe. They are quite clean and have their own way of handling bread -- and usually no butter on the table anyway. My parents learned from them and probably never knew about buttering the bread in small pieces either. I have to say, that this rule is practical. I would never break a bun and return half to the bread basket. I think restaurants don't cut it because the uncut bread looks so homey and appetizing.

first "those who were "raised properly" will make efforts to be a good host to their guests"

then

"raised properly would be those who welcome and make their guests at ease"

Lucille, you said the same thing twice but changed the word order, almost an expanded tautology.

I've heard the "raised properly" phrase used about far more things but always implying such an excess of pomposity and self-righteousness for the speaker to imply almost that "raised properly means how I was raised".

So if someone was taught by parents to offer welcome to their own guests, does that mean that another guest commenting on someone's else's poor table habits would be doing okay and be exempt from criticism?

OH OH, you would not like me sitting by you!

You are funny and have great posts. We would all be fighting to be the one that got to sit next to you!

Raised properly does in fact mean that you make someone you invited into your home feel comfortable. If someone expresses excess pomposity and self righteousness then they have failed to integrate what they were taught. That has to be obvious. That is the hard part.

A silly thing to be worried about! If I want to butter my bread all at once or as I eat it, that's my own business. Why the heck should anyone else give a flip?

Someone using the phrase "raised properly" among people I know, unless relating a story with disapproval of what someone else had said, would be laughed at. And not thought well of.

In a nut shell AG. Anyone who has a problem needs to get a life. It is only detritus from the past. It is interesting detritus though. Why would people in the past care? If you like your bread why not eat It? You aren't supposed to eat it. Why not? and so on.

"Actually etiquette was created to make some people feel superior to others."

Actually I have to disagree. Etiquette simplifies things. People don't need to know how to dine with royalty however knowing the basic rules of etiquette levels the playing field.

Rich or poor people either can have manners or not. Etiquette prevents the questions you see today, everything from RSVPs to dropping in unannounced to who gives the shower and if you should bring something to the party. People of past generations knew these things and it had zero to do with social class.

The person who lives in a trailer court and subsists on food stamps is a much more valued guest with their prompt reply to an invite than than the snob who lives on the hill in a mansion and waits until the last minute if they bother to respond at all. That's what knowing and practicing etiquette does.

BTW the reason restaurants don't slice their bread all the way through is so it doesn't fall apart into a mess when the server grabs a section to place in a basket for the table. It is prepped and bagged or set in bins ahead of time in somewhat standard lengths. Server just has to grab a chunk of bread, lay it in the lined baskets and grab a dish of butter.

It's like the rules of the road. If everyone knew how to merge onto a highway (hint: speed of traffic), make lefts turns against a green light (enter the damn intersection already) and do a zipper merge (all lanes until the end then one by one taking turns) life would be much simpler and safer. But those that refuse to learn and just want to do things their own way create the havoc.

I can't believe someone would even care how someone else buttered their bread or even noticed. Never heard of buttering your bread in tiny little pieces, silly, but then I'm from the lowly middle class and was never taught that.

watchmelol- I don't know where you are located but in regards to entering the intersection to make a left turn; that is actually illegal in several places.

A simple Google search of, "should you enter intersection to make left turn" will yield many results, the top several results from multiple states being that it is against the law to do so.

So...perhaps, much like the "buttering a single bite of bread" etiquette rule, is not so commonly known or followed.

Texas_Gem The law in most states is that you must not block an intersection. If oncoming traffic is moving straight through and have no left turn arrow of their own you are blocking no one by entering the intersection to await a break in traffic to safely make the turn. But if you have no green arrow to wait for and are turning against a green not entering an intersection could leave you stuck forever at that intersection as are the angry drivers behind you. Also it will take you longer to complete the turn when there is a break in traffic creating an additional hazard if you are not already in the intersection prepared for the break so you can turn. Texas law actually takes it further by allowing one to complete the turn after the light turns red if you are already within the intersection. If you haven't entered it you must wait for the next green. Otherwise you would be running a red.

What a huge disappointment. I thought that this thread was going to be about baking bread.

The UK is the sole country in Western Europe where the entrenched class system continues to handicap and dominate economic, social, and political conduct within the society.

Elmer, did you hear the opening statement by Fiona Hill at impeachment hearings? She spoke eloquently of the opportunities afforded her by the US that she would not have had in the UK.

I just do not enjoy watching bad table manners and that includes buttering a roll improperly and slurping soup from the bowl without a spoon. To each his own.

The title of the thread is misleading. Breaking bread means “to engage in a comfortable, friendly interaction. Originally, the term was literal, meaning that a loaf of bread would be broken to share and eat; a casual meal among associates.”

The term “Breaking Bread” isn’t about formality and judging someone because they lack the social graces that someone else “thinks” they should have.

ETA; I think there is a big difference between how someone butters their bread and slurping soup or handling the bread. I also think that the setting matters as well. Formal vs. Casual.

It simply astounds me that some people actually think that there is a correct/proper/acceptable way and an incorrect/improper/unacceptable way to put butter on bread of all things.

For years SO has refused to eat in restaurants because he thought people were watching and judging us. I thought he was crazy. I guess i owe him an apology......

I guess I must be some kind of dinosaur :-) I was raised in an age where social decorum and learning proper table manners was just as much a part of one's education as was learning your times tables and spelling!! Young women of a certain age often went to charm school or took a course in social etiquette that instructed one in how to properly navigate social interaction on various levels. Knowing how to dress for various occasions, what was accepted dinnertime conversation, what fork to use when, how to set a table correctly, how to break (NEVER cut!!) and butter a dinner roll according to the accepted procedures of the time, etc. were standard topics that we all learned. And this was a typical urban middle class upbringing.....nothing posh or relegated only to the wealthy upper class.

So these "rules" are pretty much ingrained in me. And while our approach to these situations is much more casual these days and with less reliance on what may actually be outdated rules of etiquette, those who do not follow them do stand out, at least in my eyes. Good manners remain good manners, even if times change.

Gardengal, I believe the reason for all those rules on how to navigate social interaction is for the benefit of the other person, not ones self, so that being the case if times are changing good manners call for flexibility.

If I had a choice of where to sit, I'd sit at the 'raised by wolves but with hilarious stories and fun personalities' table. In 10 years one might still remember dinner at such a table for the conversation. I doubt one would remember where and how the butter ended up at such a table.

It occurs to me that I wasted a lot of time in my misspent youth. Instead of situations that are better left unrecounted here, I could have satisfied my teenage rebellion requirements by buttering an entire roll.

Table manners my mother inculcated into us were: knife and spoon on the right, fork on the left; no elbows on the table; no talking with your mouth full and no blowing bubbles in your milk; and saying "Please pass the ___ " instead of reaching across another person. I was raised in the 60's -- it seems informality had set in most everywhere and had taken deep root in my life.

I’m a stickler for table manners although I never say anything to anyone else. I always break a piece of bread off, butter it and then eat it. I notice when people do it another way. My niece, who is a doctor, will take a roll and slather the entire top of it with butter. Makes me cringe but I don’t point it out. I also put my knife and fork down on the plate between bites. Another thing I do is keep one hand in my lap when I’m not cutting or spreading. It’s just what I was taught along with my napkin on my lap and my elbows off the table. Also, no wearing hats at the table.

i had to take a driving course at an Ivy League university where I worked since my job required driving to visit people. One thing we learned was to pull into the intersection when making a left hand turn. Maybe other states have laws against it, but we were taught it was the most efficient way to turn left.

I don't care how someone butters their bread or if their table manners are perfect. As long as they don't do anything rude/gross/unhygienic, I don't notice. I do very much dislike it when people lick their fingers while serving others. One of our relatives will, for example, lick cake frosting or pie filling from the first piece she serves off her fingers and then use those fingers to help slide the next piece of whatever onto people's plates which then gets more food on her fingers and she licks them again. Serve, lick, serve lick, blech. It really grosses me out and I try to keep her from serving stuff.

kadefol, now see, that's different. Licking and serving is germy...that's a whole nuther ball of wax!

Table manners. When I met my ex's family his sister blurted out to the whole table "she doesn't make any noise when she eats!" No, I had been severely schooled in no slurps, no gulping, no chewing noise, no noise at all. I was embarrassed to say the least but she meant well. We were taught to sit, stand, walk, how to hold your self, never put a utensil all the way into your mouth and so on. The idea being not to look offensive and put people off their meal. Courtesy. Not a bad thing except when taken to extremes. It isn't a bad thing to learn how to take a pit or bit of inedible food out of your mouth without making an exhibition of your self. Still the better part of courtesy is to not "notice" But here is the next issue, do you teach a spouse table manners when they were not taught any? Making gulping noises when you drink is not going to help you get ahead in the world nor is chewing with your mouth open. Maybe?

Patriciae, for me, the question of whether you teach a spouse table manners if she/he has none is a no brainer, yes, because your spouse will be teaching your children table manners intentionally or not. A lack of table manners will often translate into a degree of discomfort in social situations and does no one any favors. If you are not planning on having children, then it's a question of values and is much less important and is about your comfort with the manners in question. There is a big difference between how you butter your bread and whether or not you wait for everyone to be served before you start eating, for example. The former is an optional matter for me, the latter is non negotiable.

Lukki Irish Sometimes words are used tongue in cheek. You know like puns?

More risque examples would be double entendres but I don't think bread qualifies.