Bread Etiquette

Table Manners Guide

Bread is most often placed on the table in a basket that everyone shares.

• If the bread is placed in front of you, feel free to pick up the basket and offer it to the person on your right.
• If the loaf is not cut, cut a few pieces, offer them to the person to your left, and then pass the basket to your right.
• Do not touch the loaf with your fingers, instead use the clothe in the bread basket as a buffer to steady the bread as you slice it.
• Place the bread and butter on your butter plate - yours is on your left - then break off a bite sized piece of bread, put a little butter on it, and eat it.
• Don't butter the whole piece of bread and then take bites from it.
• Don't hold your bread in one hand and a drink in the other, and
• Don't take the last piece of bread without first offering it to others.

In some restaurants, olive oil is served with bread. Dip your bite-sized pieces of bread in the oil and eat.

Because butter is produced in rectangle form, and the butter knife is made with a dull blade to slice butter and a pointed tip to transfer cubes of butter to the plate.

• Passing Etiquette
• Serving Etiquette