“A wise woman in Göbeklitepe planted a handful of wheat to the ground and revitalized a dinner table. Do you suppose that the wisdom of bread is furnace? Bread is in the soil and starts with planting and sprouts at harvest and is cooked at the furnace and finds its purpose at a dinner table. At every stop, each component enriches its taste and fertility. The rain during spring, cold weather in winter, unique snow flake, and wood flame cooking the food, hand’s mark in slices and breaking carry the masterpiece to the table.”

Mine ATAMAN - Bakery Products Expert
A friend of mine keeps saying, ‘I have been in this world for ten thousand years.’ I have a piece of bread on every table they set and have my mark in any sorrow or happiness they shared, my friend continued to say. When it is said that the first artists on this world are bread masters, I always imagined that the first gastronomic activity on this earth was to give life to a piece of dough. A wise woman in Göbeklitepe planted a handful of wheat to the ground and revitalized a dinner table. With the first table at the Garden of Eden, humankind has begun to collect moments, writing every day their experience. With that, the gastronomy has begun to give its first seeds.
At that moment, humankind has begun to gather around a table to learn what it means to be a family, accumulation and creation. As families grew, they began to form villages and cities. Empires, kingdoms finally gave way to democratic modern states. Gradually, it was added on to conversation and peace. After that day, a fire has started under the blue sky. As food began to enter into houses, tables are beautified with love. The wise man appeared in different forms in different geographies; sometimes it appeared as Aphrodite, leaving her beauty in nature; sometimes appeared as Venus, teaching humankind to love; sometimes appeared as Cybele and her fertility whispered to birds, chirping every spring. At Inebolu, Sister Şerife became a beacon for hope and courage during the War of Independence as she carried food to the front line. Whatever the woman holds turns into gold, what she touches turns into fertility. The legend started in Anatolia began to spread to remote geographies and visited unknown tables.
As the first table in the Garden of Eden inspired all tables at the earth, it fermented the culture. Those women that fermented the culture also wrote the history of culture. The dinner table shared a big secret. The good, bad and painful side of life has been carried to a piece of bread firstly, later to the future. A first conversation in the table has gifted the future to the human. Women afforded future and thousands of year’s togetherness began between nature and human.
What was the secret in the table? There has been Anatolia in every bite and soil in every meal. Every color of the forest and garden formed this table. Every step in hunting, earth cultivation has left their trace in humanity’s future. While the wise woman turned the winter into summer, she also turned poverty into richness. Every fruit and vegetable fermented were a gift from poverty to richness and fertility from summer to winter.
As season changes and flowers change their colors, the wise woman gathered all women near a river. As she told her stories to the river, her burden began to get lighter and she smiled to the river as she drank. The woman planted every seed in the earth, tree and flower and she made a mountain out of a molehill and planted hope to the table. As tables got fermented, for thousands of years, culture has been fermented with dried meat. The smell of summer and the enthusiasm of spring have turned into food for the winter in bowls. Sumerians built seven-floor ziggurats for seeds of wheat and peace.
All notes written in diaries has become a subject to lament, a design to rug, a figure in the folk dance, thus carried the tradition to the future. The tablecloth of health meals cooked in the Anatolian’s fermented kitchen has become a design in the Yuruk tent. As moments dance with minutes and turned into days, months and years, the Anatolian kitchen has become ten thousand years old. In soup boiler, many people and cultures’ marks have been mixed. As she mixed the boiler, she prayed. She added the mark of her hand, home and region to every spoon. Visitors have been honored and togetherness and sharing have flamed and surrounded the region. Babies of the wise woman have eaten their first bite from the milk honey and the humankind held on to the life.
Every table set with the eye of the heart feeds the eye and the heart is fed by nature. Someone’s table and other’s bite have come together, become one and were brought to the table. In Anatolia, recipes turned into legends, and then legends into tradition and have become a unique custom: Sari Gelin, Ateşbaz Saint and Somuncu Father. Yunus was tested with wheat and shed tears at the Tapduk Emre’s Dervish Lodge. Anatolia has become a visitor and treated as the God’s guest at all of the domiciles. Whatever it owns has become part of the table.
Do you suppose that bread’s wisdom is furnace? Bread is in the soil, it starts with planting and sprouts at harvest and is cooked at the furnace and finds life at the table. At every stop, each component enriches its taste. The rain, weather, flame, and hand’s mark in slices carries the most valuable masterwork to the table. The table is the masterpiece ever set.
In the past, Anatolia has opened its water channels for giving life to wheat. As history grew, it became iron, hook and plow and has become way from craftsman’s furnace to cooker. Stones crushing wheat and mills crushing grain have left its marks on history as the world got older.
As fruit and vegetable turned into peace cooked at the furnace, they became food and gave life. As each of us is unique, what we eat is a reflection of us. What the wise woman ate has turned into experience. As years passed, it sometimes turned into wine or mother earth’s advice.