for identification purposes, it is bread before the blessing.
don’t you think it odd, that for 16 centuries, your doctrine that it remains bread was unknown? surely, the true Church taught by the Apostles for 60 years would get this right. who was the first person in history to teach the real presence and where did we see the “true” Christians oppose this false teaching? no one i have ever met can answer that question, do you want to try??
“don’t you think it odd, that for 16 centuries, your doctrine that it remains bread was unknown? “
That is hardly true. Transubstantiation wasn’t even a word until around 1100 AD.
See this article for many who believed it was symbolically the body. A sample:
“Clement of Alexandria (150-211/216 A.D.) also called the bread and wine symbols of the body and blood of Christ, and taught that the communicant received not the physical but the spiritual life of Christ.8 Origen (185-253/254 A.D.), likewise, speaks in distinctively spiritual and allegorical terms when referring to the eucharist.
Eusebius of Caesarea (263-340 A.D.) identified the elements with the body and blood of Christ but, like Tertullian, saw the elements as being symbolical or representative of spiritual realities.9 He specifically states that the bread and wine are symbols of the Lord’s body and blood and that Christ’s words in John 6 are to be understood spiritually and figuratively as opposed to a physical and literal sense.”
http://www.the-highway.com/eucharist_Webster.html