You are the most important person in town, you hold your local society together. The men and
women in your community who work every day to feed their families depend on you without you
people will go hungry even homeless there would be civil unrest riots in the streets if it wasn't
for your constant routine. The very fabric of humanity is woven together by your hands.
Can you believe all of this is because of bread?
As a baker you have a responsibility to your community to be able to bake this bread,
bake it well, bake it to a certain standard, and in many situations the baker took an oath.
In front of the community because this is the most important job in the world.
Not just anyone can become a baker you almost have to be born into the trade.
Many, many people started off as an apprentice and not just anyone can be an apprentice. You
really have to be strong enough for this trade. You're carrying around heavy sacks
of flour you're carrying around huge baskets of bread in the streets to sell them. You
start off young as a baker. Bakers in a community are part of a guild so much so
that they even turn out for parades and they're all together and dressed all in
the same way in a uniform. And in this guild situation the bakers in the community have
to compete against one another but also support one another as they work within that community.
Why was the baker important? Why didn't people just bake bread at home? Not everyone has an
oven in their home in fact most people don't have an oven in their home. And they certainly
can't afford to fire it every day it takes a lot of fuel to fire up a little tiny oven.
The baker has a huge oven he has to start that oven up in the morning but it bakes
for the entire town. And not just bread but people will bring other things to the baker
to have them bake. You might bring a big cake you might bring a whole haunch of venison.
The customer is everyone in town from the richest house to the poor house. And it's interesting
that there's a loaf of bread that represents each level of society. Whether it's the most
refined bread for the rich person's table or the coarsest dark loaf for the poor house.
The reason why bread is so important is it's the one thing the everyday man can survive upon. And
he doesn't need to cook it he can just buy it and eat it and that's it that's all he really
has to have. We will find journal entries where an author will talk about a meal that
seems very complete and he will complain about the lack of bread that's how important it was.
As the baker you're required to bake three kinds of bread for the community. You bake
a white bread sometimes called fine bread you bake a middling bread and sometimes it's called
middling or just wheaton bread and then a low class bread a cheap bread brown bread and it
was generally called household bread. Here's our fine wheat bread this is the one everybody wants.
And it's sort of a plain bread it you expect to put butter on this it's not full of flavor.
This is our wheaton bread the middling bread the less expensive bread. And it has that nice wheat
flavor it's a little more dense it's actually more flavorful. We come down to the very inexpensive
household bread this is the bread poor people can actually afford it's less than half the price.
And it is a dense meal it is full of flavor. It's got that wonderful brand that comes through which
is the thing that gets thrown out of the white bread you're getting the full meal in a slice of
bread. As the baker you face many challenges and one of the foremost is regulation. Bread
has been regulated for thousands of years the Romans regulated bread and they're regulating
many different aspects. Exactly what goes in your bread is it white bread is it brown bread is it
household bread. And you're regulating the weight of the bread your bread has to weigh a certain
amount. Your bread also has to be a particular price and your bread has to be marked each and
every loaf has to have an initial on it. Who you are as the baker it also has to say what
kind of bread it is and it might even say how much the bread is supposed to weigh. And if you
don't put these marks on your bread your bread may be forfeit and given to the poor house.
There are also challenges with seasonality and supply. Bread is very difficult to bake if it's
too cold outside. You need to proof your bread that yeast needs to work and if it's too cold it
just will not rise. Yeast is a problem when it's cold or it's warm. The Brewer where the yeast
comes from he's giving you yeast at the best time of year either in the spring or more likely in
the fall but when it gets to be cold winter time he's not brewing beer and you don't have a supply
of yeast. There were times when yeast was in great demand and it was very difficult to get a hold of.
You will have problems getting a hold of flour we have crop failures maybe the weather is cold or
wet and the wheat crop is a failure and the flour that finally comes to you is a very low quality
and hardly works for bread at all. The baker has to be quick on his feet he has to be able to make
substitutions still within the law and bake bread for people who want it every single day.
If you do not get people the bread that they require there will be civil unrest and at times
even violence against your shop and your person because they want bread now. And there are even
bread riots recorded throughout history. It's one of the reasons why bread is regulated so tightly.
As the baker what do you do when you can't get enough flour to bake your bread or it's too
expensive? This happens many times and there are certain things you can do most of them well they
don't quite meet with all the regulations. You can add other kinds of flour in maybe you're going to
add barley flour or rye flour into your bread. It isn't exactly what the regulations say but in
certain circumstances it's the only thing you can do. There are other times when you add things into
your bread to make them look whiter. So they would add Alum to the bread or they would add chalk to
the bread. There might be several reasons to do this sometimes you're just putting an inexpensive
ingredient in and one that weighs a lot so that you can make your bread cheaper. Or if you can't
get enough wheat you might add that chalk to it so that it actually rises better. It's against
the law if you get caught you will be punished. If a baker or brewer be guilty not to have observed
the a size for the first second or third fault he shall be fined except for the offense be grievous
and often and then shall the baker to the pillory. The reality is is that baker's breaking the law
isn't all that common this profession is one that is very fulfilling. The community needs bread.
I just love the crust when it comes out of the earth and oven they're so different than
anything else you can smell the difference when it comes out of the earthen oven and the texture is
different I think it has to do with that trapped moisture that you just don't get in a modern oven.
Bakers were looked up to because of what they provided to the community
you're providing nutrition, fuel for The working man, survival for the poor. what you do is truly
the most important job in the world. "Wow, I remember the last time I had so much bread"