SC - trencher history guesses

[Laura C Minnick]

On Mon, 1 Feb 1999, Philip & Susan Troy wrote:

> Well, one thing we're pretty sure of is that the poorer classes often
> didn't eat bread at all because they tended not to have easy or free
> access to mills or ovens, and porridge uses much less fuel. I suppose
> gen-yoo-ine paisanos, living in the country, might build various sorts
> of evens and grind a coarse meal for flatbreads and such, but I'm not
> sure I buy the idea that there was all that much unrecorded bread eating
> by the less-than-well-to-do, let alone with gravy on top.
>  
> Adamantius

	I'm afraid I can't make such sweeping statements. As usual, it
depends on where and when. There are too many documents regarding the
weights of bread and reporting the thievery of bakers, in 14th-15th c.
England in particular, for me to say that most poor people didn't have
bread. Village women took their bread dough to the baker to be baked in
the communal oven. Sometimes he stole their dough, in little bits so as to
not be noticed, and turned around and sold it, baked, to the retail
market. We have pictures of bakers in the stocks with short-weight loaves
hanging around their necks. No, I rather think that a) in some places,
some people ate less bread because of the concerns of oven availability
and affordibility. But I also think that b) a great many had a
village-based lifestyle that included taking the bread dough to the baker
like we might go to the corner store to pick up the newspaper, our
clothing to the dry-cleaner, our car to Minute-Lube for an oil change.

'Lainie
- -
Laura C. Minnick
University of Oregon
Department of English
- -
"Libraries have been the death of many great men, particularly the
Bodleian."
	Humfrey Wanley, c. 1731




============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================