[Sca-cooks] Another bread question - bakeries

[Brett McNamara]

Many cultures still do this today.  I don't have sources to hand, but
I recall the practice of bringing dough to baker happening in such
diverse locales as Morocco, Italy, and parts of India.  In Italy they
make distinct patterns on the top of the loaf, kind of a makers mark,
so they know which one to pick up.

An oven is obviously quite a resource investment.  It takes a lot of
fuel to get the thing to any kind of thermal mass.  However, once
there, maintenance is far more economical.  A big, shared one makes
sense.

We know for sure that grain was brought to a miller throughout period,
it's not unlikely dough would be brought to baker by the same culture.

Wistan



On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 23:38:47 -0400, AEllin Olafs dotter
<aellin at earthlink.net> wrote:
> While we're discussing bread... I was talking about baking  in period
> with someone a while ago, and a question arose.
> 
> I was under the impression that bakers made all or almost all  bread, as
> a general rule, from scratch and by their own recipes, and people simply
> purchased it.
> 
> The person I was speaking to believes that the individual household
> would prepare their own loaves, and then bring the risen loaves to the
> baker to bake. A communal oven, so to speak, but not a single baker.
> 
> Of course, I'm looking mostly at later period, urban situations... and
> she has looked largely at somewhat earlier, more rural settings,
> villages, rather than large cities - would that be the difference? Or is
> one of us mistaken? Or is this just another case of that messy word
> "period" - covering a thousand years and an entire continent (with
> extras,) of course there are differences?
> 
> I'm interested in this... Bear? *G* Anyone else?
> 
> AEllin
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