Man has not always eaten fine wheaten bread, biscuits, or sponge cakes; and, for many centuries, the inexperience of his palate prevented his imagining or understanding those magiric combinations, that science of good living, Let us go no further back than the year 2000 before the Christian era, and enter together the tent of the father of nations—Abraham. We might lead you to the fire-side of each of the nineteen patriarchs who preceded him, but that would take us too far. In the interior of this nomad dwelling, Sarah, the venerable companion of the Pastor-King, has just prepared, with flour and water, round pieces of flattened paste, which she places on the hearth, and covers afterwards with hot ashes. Although the use of bread without leaven and baked under the ashes was common among the Jews, It appears not unlikely that the Hebrews learned from the Egyptians how to prepare the leaven they made use of. The period at which an allusion is made to it for the first time, in the Bible, renders this supposition likely. It is when the people of God were about to escape from the slavery of the Egyptians, and are preparing to celebrate the Passover, on the eve of their setting out for the Desert. The chief baker or butler, whose punishment and death Joseph foretold, when he interpreted that officer’s dream, was an Egyptian, and belonged to King Pharaoh. Hitherto an infallible book has been our guide; let us now dive into the dark and almost boundless regions of fabulous antiquity. The most frightful god of which the fevered imagination of man could possibly form an idea—a god with the face and legs of a goat, the horrible Pan!—according to some credulous writers, taught mortals the art of making and baking bread. The name even of this food, they say, furnishes an incontestable proof of this assertion. This, one would think, is conclusive; but the learned, the philologist, and every Procrustes of literature, protests against a halt with so fair a field before him. It is from the word pascere, Ceres taught the Greeks how to cultivate corn; they learned from Megalarte and Megalomaze how to knead flour and bake it in ovens. The bread-market at Athens was very amusing; women (for the fair sex busied themselves with this trade) waited, seated, by the side of their baskets until Mercury should send them customers, and woe to those who came late, or whose evil genius led them to find fault with either the quality, quantity, or price of the goods. Have you ever heard the ladies of Billingsgate playing off their pleasant jokes on a timid countryman, or a foreigner, whose accent had betrayed him? It is a running fire of puns and crude picturesque expressions which nothing can resist; our Greek market-women would have been more than a match for them—can we bestow upon them greater praise? Some of them sold azumos, a delicate sort of biscuit, but rather tasteless, prepared without leaven; Let us add to this imperfect enumeration, that the Greeks baked their bread in several different manners: some in ovens, others under ashes, over charcoal, or between two pieces of iron, similar to our gauffre moulds, and under a bell, or cover of some metal with a rim round the top, and fire over it. The Romans were for a long time Pultiphagists, or eaters of gruel, &c.; Whether this little story be true or not, the people of Romulus had a decided taste for gruel; it was a national dish, and was only discontinued to be given to the soldiers, defenders of the republic, when it was King Numa (1715 B.C.), guided by the advice of the nymph, Egeria, taught his subjects the art of parching corn, of converting it into flour by means of mortars, and of making that gruel with which he liked to regale himself. This good prince was rather fond of interfering in what did not concern him, and the royal compound was afterwards cooked in the public bakehouses, which the piety of the sovereign placed under the protection of the powerful Fornax, a goddess unknown till then, and who soon became the object of general and fervent worship. There is but one step from gruel to bread: the Romans perceived it. Thus this favourite dish lost its reputation, and the worship of Fornax somewhat cooled. But, on the other hand, there was still the smell of cakes on all sides; cooking on the hearth, on the coals, in small bell-stoves, and in large baking pans, until ultimately they became acquainted with the use of ovens. At last, Rome began to have them built, under the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, about 630 years before the Christian era. They were solid constructions, immoveable, and very like those of the present day. Once there, those worthy plebeians amused themselves by giving full scope to their noisy fun, slandering their neighbours freely and charitably, telling each other all the little scandal they had picked up here and there, among the good souls in their neighbourhood. Hence these public places of labour and incessant babbling were called the “gossip bakehouses.” These joyous meetings continued until the arrival of Greek bakers, 170 years B.C., who followed the victorious armies of the republic on their return from Macedonia. The Romans perceived the importance of perpetuating the talent of these strangers, and converting it eventually into a national industry. With these views, they gave them Roman colleagues, and subsequently they were formed into a college, or sort of association, which no member could quit on any pretext whatever. The son followed his father’s profession, and he who married the daughter of a baker became one himself. The above details on some of the dispositions of the law regarding this interesting corporation, sufficiently prove the importance that the Roman government attached to it, and wished it should always maintain. The bakers of Rome received from the public granaries whatever they required, at a price fixed by the magistrate. If the officer charged with the distribution of it gave a bad quality, or exacted a bribe to supply good corn, that officer was disgraced, and he became forever a journeyman baker. Independently of public bakeries, the number of which reached 329 under the reign of Augustus, there were also, in the houses of the wealthy, slaves whose sole occupation was the making of bread, and these slaves brought an exorbitant price when they excelled in their art. It is absolutely necessary to dive into the private life of the Roman people, and not to neglect any of their domestic customs (accounts of which are scattered here and there, in the writings of the more serious Modern nations are satisfied with the bread more or less white, and even bear, without much complaint, certain illicit mixtures, in which various heterogeneous substances are sometimes strangely amalgamated; but this was not the case in Rome. The prefect of provisions (prÆfectus annonÆ) was scrupulously careful to see that the supply of bread was abundant; that it was of exact weight; that the manipulation of it was excellent; and that it was made of the best flour the public granaries contained. As we have already observed, that was one of the most serious cares of the government on behalf of a people who only required two things—bread and the circus, They studied carefully every modification that the art of baking might seem to require: they examined the leaven in use, and experimented with new kinds. The following are the compositions Pliny has transmitted to us:— The Romans thought much of millet for their leaven; they mixed it with sweet wine, in which they let it ferment a year. They employed, also, wheat bran, soaked for three days in sweet white wine, and dried in the sun. Of this they diluted a certain quantity at the time of making bread, which was left to ferment in the best wheat flour, and afterwards mixed with the entire mass. The leavens just mentioned were made during the vintage; the rest of the year they were replaced by the following:—A dish containing two pounds of barley paste was placed on red-hot coals, and heated until ebulition commenced. It was put into vessels till it became sour. Very often leaven was procured from dough just made. A piece was taken from the mass previous to salt being added; it was then left to turn sour, and might be used the next day. The celebrated naturalist who supplies these details, tells us that, in his time, the Gauls and Spaniards, after having made a drink from wheat, saved the scum to raise the dough, and that their bread was the lightest of all. It would be difficult to form an idea of the prodigious luxury which Rome introduced into an aliment so common, and of such universal Let us go together under the vast galleries supported by those magnificent arcades. In the middle of the inclosure you see the statue of Vesta, the goddess worshipped by bakers. The Roman gentry and shopkeepers give the preference to this sort of household bread, simply composed of flour, water, and salt. You perceive, here and there, several baskets, full of heavy biscuits; they are called autopyron; it is a coarse, black food, composed of bran mixed with a little flour, and made expressly for the dogs and slaves. Do you see that colossal-looking man, with enormous limbs, who is walking about with an air of stupidity, and whose small head is covered with scars? The dealers know his profession, and one of them offers him the athletÆ’s bread; it is kneaded, without leaven, with soft, white curd cheese, and is a coarse, heavy food, which that class of people seem to partake of with great delight. His neighbour (called the Greek), was born at Athens; he is the fashionable purveyor to the princes, senators, and sybarites of Rome. No one understands so well as himself the art of mixing salt, oil, and We should have spoken to you of the astrologicus bread, the paste of which is similar to that we use in our days to make fritters, commonly called batter. Also of the cacabaceus, which is indebted for its agreeable and spicy flavour to the water, which is previously boiled in a kind of bronzed stewpan; and the siligineus bread, made of the best flour. Its manipulation is difficult and tedious; no matter—the epicurean prefers it, when, by chance, he happens to be hungry. Neither ought we to forget the panis madidus, a species of paste made of milk and flour, with which the fashionable ladies and effeminate dandies covered their faces before going to bed, to preserve the freshness and beauty of their complexion. But this enumeration may appear to you idle and endless; let us, therefore, leave the market and assist at the distribution of bread civilis among the people, of which thirteen ounces is given to each person; DESCRIPTION OF PLATE No. VII. Bread.—No. 1. In Herculaneum there were found two entire loaves of the same dimension, being 13½ inches in diameter, and 3½ inches thick. Each had eight divisions cut on the top, that is to say,—a cross was first marked, and between each, another division was made; some had stamps on the top. No. 2. At Pompeii, in a shop near the Pantheon, were discovered bronze moulds for pastry and bread. No. 3. The Cappadocia bread, made in a mould, found at Pompeii. No. 4. The mould for the above. The customs of the middle ages cannot be better illustrated than by adding the following curious notes: The Norman kings subjected the bakers to very severe laws with respect to the weight and price of bread. The first offence was punished by the confiscation of their bread; the second by a fine; and the third by the pillory. Saint Louis made statutes for the bakers of Paris. He forbade them to bake on Sunday or any festival day, under pain of a fine of eighteen sous (about eight pence), and a certain quantity of bread. But he gave them permission to open their shops and sell every day of the year without exception. In the 17th century, a new regulation was made concerning bakers; they were to bake “daily, and have always on sale three kinds of bread, viz., that known as pain de chalis, of twelve ounces; pain de chapitre, of ten ounces; and brownish household bread, of sixteen ounces. The price of each to be douze deniers (a halfpenny), marked by the baker with his own particular mark.” They were also permitted to make “rolls and other sorts,” but not to expose them for sale “under pain of being fined four hundred Paris livres (a little more than twelve pounds sterling).” Master-bakers were admitted at Paris, in the 14th century, in the following manner:— When a young man had been successively winnower, sifter, kneader, and foreman, he could, by paying a certain amount to the king as legiance money, become an aspirant-baker, and commence business on his own account. Four years after, he was received as master by going through certain formalities. On a given day, he set out from his house, followed by all the bakers of the town, and repaired to the residence of the master of the bakers, to whom he presented a new pot filled with nuts, saying: “Master, I have accomplished my four years; here is my pot of nuts.” Then the master of the bakers asked the secretary of the trade whether that were true, and having received a reply in the affirmative, the master of the bakers returned the pot to the aspirant, who broke it against the wall, and was at once reckoned amongst the masters. Let us reckon up the different kinds of bread that were in use at that epoch: The bread made simply with flour, water, salt, and yeast—the common bread; the best was made at Chailly or Gonesse. The bread cooked in hot water—pain ÉchaudÉ (in England, we should call it baked dumpling). The bread made of the finest flour, beaten a long time with two sticks—pounded bread. The bread made of the very finest and purest flour (biscuit flour) slightly baked—roll bread. The bread made of fine flour, kneaded with butter, and sprinkled with whole wheat—sheep bread. The bread made of fine flour, eggs and milk—Christmas bread. And lastly, rye bread, kneaded with spice, honey, or sugar—gingerbread. |