The earliest form of bread consisted of grain soaked in water, then pressed, and afterwards dried by means of the sun or fire. Another early kind of bread took the form of porridge or pudding, consisting of flour mixed with water and boiled. Next came the method of kneading dough, and the result was tough and unleavened bread.

In Saxon times women made bread, and the modern title “lady” is softened from the Saxon hlaf-dige, meaning the distributor of bread. We learn from contemporary pictures that Anglo-Saxon bread consisted of round cakes, not unlike the Roman loaves of which we get representations in the pictures at Pompeii, and not unlike our Good-Friday cross-buns, which we are told come down to us from our Saxon forefathers.

In connection with monasteries were bake-houses, and the work here would be done by the conversi or lay brothers. The holy bread in the mass was baked in the convents and churches by the priests or monks with much ceremony. Ovens were sometimes connected with old churches.

Some of the monks in Saxon times do not appear to have fared well. We find it recorded that in the eighth century those at the Abbey of St. Edmund had to partake of barley bread because the income of the house was not sufficent to provide wheaten-bread twice or thrice daily.

Towards the close of the thirteenth century the chief bakers who supplied London with bread lived at Stratford-le-Bow, Essex, doubtless on account of being near Epping Forest, where they could obtain cheap firewood. At a later period some were located at Bromley-by-Bow. The bread was brought to London in carts, and exposed for sale in Bread Street. The bakers attended daily excepting on Sundays and great festivals. It was no uncommon circumstance to seize the bread on its way to town for being of light weight, or made of unsound materials. It was not until the year 1302 that London bakers were permitted to sell bread in shops.

A Royal Charter was granted in 1307 to the London Bakers’ Company. The charter, we are told, “empowered the company to correct offences concerning the trade, to make laws and ordinances, to levy fines and penalties for non-observance thereof; and within the city and suburbs, and twelve miles round, to view, search, prove, and weigh all bread sold; and in case of finding it unwholesome, or not of due assize, to distribute it to the poor of the parish where it was found, and to impose fines, and levy the same by distress and sale of offenders’ goods.” When reform became the order of the day the power of the Bakers’ Company passed away.

There are various old-time statutes of the assize of bread in London. The earliest dates back to the days of Henry II. Another belongs to the reign of Henry III.; it regulated the price of bread according to the value of corn. A baker breaking the law was fined, and if his offence was serious he was placed in the pillory. These statutes were extended under Edward VI., Charles II., and Queen Anne.

In 1266 bakers were commanded not to impress their bread with the sign of the cross, Agnus Dei, or the name of Jesus Christ.

The lot of the baker in bygone times was a very hard one. He could not sell where he liked, and the price of his bread was regulated by those in authority. Pike, in his “History of Crime in England,” says, “Turn where he might, the traveller in London in 1348 could hardly fail to light upon some group, which would tell him the character of the people he had to see. Here, perhaps, a baker with a loaf hung round his neck, was being jeered, and pelted in the pillory, because he had given short weight, or because, when men had asked him for bread, he had given them not a stone, but a lump of iron enclosed by a crust.”

At this period women were largely employed in the bakehouse. Women in mediÆval times performed much of the rougher kind of labour. Mr. Pike tells a tragic tale to illustrate the heartless character of bakehouse women in bygone times:—“At Middleton, in Derbyshire, there lived a man whose wife bore a name well known to readers of mediÆval romances, Isolda or Isoult. As he lay one night asleep in his bed, this female Othello took him by the neck and strangled him. As soon as he was dead, she carried the body to an oven which adjourned their chamber, and piled up a fire to destroy the traces of her guilt. But, though she had so far shown the energy and power of a man, her courage seems to have failed her at the last moment. She took to flight, and her crime was discovered.”

In the olden time, it was the practice of females to deliver bread from house to house in London. The bakers gave them thirteen articles for twelve, and the odd article appears to have been the legitimate profit which they were entitled to receive in return for their work. From this old custom we obtain the baker’s dozen of thirteen. Bakers were not permitted to give credit to women retailers if they were known to be in debt to others. It was also against the law to receive back unsold bread if cold. The latter regulation would make the saleswomen energetic in their labours.

In many places the ducking-stool was employed to punish offending bakers. The old records of Beverley contain references to this subject. “During the Middle Ages,” it is stated on good authority, “scarcely any spectacle was so pleasing to the people of Central Europe as that of the public punishment of the cheating baker. The penalties inflicted on swindling bakers included confiscation of property, deprivation of civil and other rights, banishment from the town for certain periods, bodily punishment, the pillory, and the gibbet. If a baker was found guilty of an offence against the law, he was arrested and kept in safe custody till the gibbet was ready for him. It was erected as nearly as possible in the middle of the town, the beam projecting over a stagnant pool; at the end of the beam was a pulley, over which ran a rope fastened to a basket large enough to hold a man. The baker was forced into the basket, which was drawn up to the beam; there he hung over the muddy pool, the butt of the jeers and missiles of a jubilant crowd. The only way to escape was to jump into the dirty water and run through the crowd to his home, and if he did not take the jump willingly, he was sometimes helped out of the basket by means of a pole. In some towns a large cage was used instead of a basket, and, instead of taking a jump, the culprit was lowered into the filthy pool and drawn up again several times until the town authorities thought he had had enough.” In some parts of Turkey it was, until recently, the rule to punish a baker who did not give full weight by nailing his ear to the doorpost. If he were out when the officers of justice arrived his son or his servant was punished in his stead, as the authorities were very much averse from making their men do the journey twice.

The Court Leet records of many of our old English towns include items of interest bearing on this subject. At Manchester, at the Court Leet held October 1, 1561, it was resolved that no person or persons be permitted to make for sale any kind of bread in which butter is mixed, under a fine of 10s. Later, the use of suet was forbidden. In 1595, we are told that “the Court Leet Jury of Manchester ordered that no person was to be allowed to use butter or suet in cakes or bread; fine, 20s. No baker or other person to be allowed to bake said cakes, &c.; fine, 20s. No person to be allowed to sell the same; fine, 20s.” Next year, on September 30, we gather from the records that “eight officers were appointed to see that no flesh meat was eaten on Fridays and Saturdays, and twelve for the overseeing of them that put butter, cream, or suet in their cakes.” We learn from the history of Worcester that an order was made in 1641 that the bakers were not to make spice bread or short cakes, “inasmuch as it enhaunced the price of butter.”

A rather curious regulation in bygone times was the one which enforced the baker of white bread not to make brown, and the baker of brown bread not to make white.

Very heavy fines used to be inflicted on persons selling short weight of bread. “A baker was convicted yesterday,” says the Times of July 8th, 1795, “at the Public Office, Whitechapel, of making bread to the amount of 307 ounces deficient in weight, and fined a penalty of £64 7s.” In the same journal, three days later, we read, “A baker was yesterday convicted in the penalty of £106 5s. on 420 ounces of bread, deficient in weight.” The market records, week after week, in 1795, as a rule, record an increased price of grain, and by the middle of the year the matter had become serious. The members of the Privy Council gave the subject careful consideration, and strongly recommended that families should refrain from having puddings, pies, and other articles made of flour. With the following paragraph from the Times of July 22nd, 1795, we close our notes on bread in bygone days:—“His Majesty has given orders for the bread used in his household to be made of meal and rye mixed. No other sort is to be permitted to be baked, and the Royal Family eat bread of the same quality as their servants do.”