The St Petersburg Museum of Bread is the only one of this kind in Russia and one of thirteen in the world, was founded in 1988 within the Bread Production Trust. In 1993 it received the status of a state museum. The name of the museum reflects its purpose. Bread, a great achievement of mankind and one of its staple articles of diet, is a symbol of man's harmonious relations with nature. Each civilization left unmistakable traces of the activities of its bakers recorded in numerous archaeological and written sources. Hymns and songs were created in honour of bread, and festivities were organized to mark sowing and harvesting seasons. Bread and salt were used to welcome the coming of new-born babies into the world, they were also offered to a bride and a groom on the threshold of their home and presented to dear and honourable guests as a symbol of hospitality. All these customs reflecting a folk wisdom allow us to see the daily life of society at an unusual angle. The exhibition of the museum enables us to trace the everyday life and morals of our ancestors through "our daily bread". Alongside the exhibits showing the baker's art in the distant past, the displays illustrate the history of bread-baking in St. Petersburg. A wide range of baked products testify to the high professional skills of St. Petersburg bakers and flour confectioners in the nineteenth century. Visitors to the museum can see a small-scale urban bakery with a complete set of equipment generally used to produce bread for the capital's poorer people. A distinguished place is occupied by the exhibits which illustrate the most tragic periods in the history of the city, then called Petrograd and later Leningrad. In the section devoted to World War II and the siege of Leningrad, one can see a 125 gm piece of rustic bread made of oil-cake, oats flour, powdered rye and hydrocellulose which was given as a daily ration. The bread displayed was baked in our days following the recipes developed in the central laboratory of the bread-baking trust during the war