[Sca-cooks] Another bread question - bakeries

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach 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.

There are medieval English laws on the books (maybe look in one of 
the Assizes) specifying the penalties for short-weight loaves, and 
also for a sort of bait-and-switch scam some bakers would pull, in 
which a loaf left for baking on the counter would be placed over a 
little trapdoor, under which was an accomplice (presumably an 
apprentice of some sort) who'd hide under the counter and pull off 
handfuls of dough from the underside of the loaf. The baker would 
then knead these handfuls together, shape into loaves, bake and sell 
them as his own.

Which, I guess, is a roundabout way of saying, yeah, bakers did 
sometimes bake loaves the customers brought in for that purpose. C. 
Anne Wilson also mentions it briefly (the practice of bakers baking 
bread made by others) in "Food and Drink In Britain". Offhand, I 
don't know what her source for that information is, but I've seen it 
mentioned numerous times.

I think that, as Wistan mentions, the fuel requirements for a 
dedicated oven, not to mention the possibility of fire, even in a 
small village, and, for all I know, some weird Norman licensing thing 
(as with millers), might tend to make having a real baking oven in 
one's home, unless your home was a manor house of some kind, unlikely.

And stories of other things, like cassoulet and cholent, being 
dropped off at the baker's to be picked up when needed seem to abound 
until the early 20th century, which leads me to suspect an oven in 
the home was a comparative rarity in the Middle Ages. Which, of 
course, does not preclude baking on the hearth, either under a cloche 
of some sort, or in a pot, or wrapped in leaves or a cloth, etc.

Adamantius

>
>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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