Bread and salt

Bread and salt, a traditional Slavic greeting.

Bread and salt is a Slavic welcome greeting ceremony and also a type of food.

When important, respected, or admired guests arrive, they are given a loaf of bread placed on a rushnik (embroidered towel). A salt holder or a salt cellar is placed on top of the bread loaf or secured in a hole on the top of the loaf. In modern Russia, on official occasions, the "bread and salt" is presented by young women dressed in national costumes (e.g., sarafan and kokoshnik).

When this tradition is observed in spaceflight, small packages of bread and salt are used.