If a Latin author had to include a line about how incredible tortillas are or an Italian on the wonders of pasta in everything they wrote, how ridiculous would they look?
Although I do remember a decent medieval story where the SI introduces pasta and boiled dumplings and it proves to be popular with the peasantry (though not to the point of replacing bread outright) because
- Bread is tricky to make in medieval times - it takes time to fire up an oven (an unless you're a professional baker you might not even have one or be allowed to operate one), and unless you've got the money to take your flour to a baker you're probably going to be limited to making flatbreads
- The quality of bread for a lot of peasants is going to be hard and coarse.
- Pasta just takes bread, water, and a pot. Dried pasta can also last longer than bread.
- Pasta cooks faster than boiling a pudding in a cloth, which was another alternative to bread in medieval times.
So I'd forgive someone for introducing pasta and making it popular. At least that has a decent explanation for why it could happen.
