Bread

BREAD. The name given to the staple food-product pre pared by the baking of flour. Bread baking, or at any rate the preparation of cakes from flour or parched grain by means of heat, is one of the most ancient of human arts. At Wangen and Robenhausen have been found the calcined remains of cakes made from coarsely-ground grain in Swiss lake-dwellings that date back to the Stone Age. The cakes were made of different kinds of grain, barley and one-grained wheat (Triticuen monococcum) being among the ingredients. This bread was made, not from fine meal, but from grain crushed between hard surfaces. (See FLOUR AND FLOUR MANUFACTURE.) Perhaps the earliest form of bread, if that word may be used, was prepared from acorns and beech nuts. To this day a cake prepared from crushed acorns is eaten by the Indians of the Pacific slopes. The flour extracted from acorns is bitter and unfit to eat till it has been thoroughly soaked in boiling water. The saturated flour is squeezed into a cake and dried in the sun. Pliny speaks of a similar crude process in connection with wheat; the grain was evidently pounded and the crushed remnant soaked into a pulp, then made into a cake and dried in the sun. Virgil (Georgics, i. 267) refers to the husband man first toasting and then crushing his grain between stones : Nunc torrete igni f rages, nuns frangite saxo.

How did the lake-dwellers bake their cakes of bruised grain? Probably the dough was laid on a flat or convex-shaped stone, which was heated, while the cake was covered with hot ashes. Stones have been found among prehistoric remains which were apparently used for this purpose. In ancient Egyptian tombs cakes of durra have been found, of concave shape, suggesting the use of such baking-slabs ; here the cake was evidently prepared from coarsely-cracked grain. In primitive times milling and baking were twin arts. The housewife crushed or ground the grain and pre pared the bread or cakes. Professor Maspero says that an oven for baking bread was to be found in the courtyard of every house in Chaldaea; close by were kept the grinding stones. That bread prepared by means of leaven was known in the days of the patri archs may be fairly inferred from the passage in Gen. iii., where it is said of Lot that he "made a feast, and did bake unleavened bread." Whether the shewbread of the Jewish tabernacle was leavened is an open question, but it is significant that the Pass over cakes eaten by Jews to-day, known as matzos, are innocent of leaven. Made from flour and water only, they are about z2in. in diameter, and resemble water biscuits.

The White Bread of Egypt.

The ancient Egyptians carried the art of baking to high perfection. Herodotus remarks of them, "dough they knead with their feet, but clay with their hands." The practice of using the feet for dough kneading, however re pulsive, long persisted in Scotland, if indeed it is yet defunct. The Egyptians used for their bread, wheat, spelt, barley and durra. It is certain that even in ancient Egypt white bread made from wheat was used by the rich. The form of the bread is revealed by ancient monuments. A common shape was a small, round loaf, something like the muffin of to-day. Other loaves were elongated rolls, and curiously enough were sprinkled on the top with seeds like modern Vienna bread.

The history of baking in classical Greece and Italy can be clearly traced. Athenaeus in his Deipnosophists minutely de scribes many different kinds of bread, which may be assumed to have been currently used in Greece. According to Pliny (Nat. Hist. xviii. II. s. 28) Rome had no public bakers till after the war with Perseus (171-168 B.e. ). That long after public bake houses came into use the Romans and other urban dwellers in Italy continued to make a great deal of bread at home is certain. In Pompeii several private houses had their own mill and bake house. That city must also have possessed bakers by trade, as loaves of bread have been found, round in form, and stamped with the maker's name, possibly to fix responsibility for weight and purity. In the time of the republic, public bakehouses were under the control of the aediles. Grain was delivered to the public granaries by the Saccarii, while another body called Cata bolenses distributed the grain to the bakers. The latter were known as Pistores or "pounders," a reminiscence of the primitive time when grain was pounded by a pestle in a mortar. Slaves were largely employed in the irksome work of grinding, and when Con stantine abolished slavery the staff of the Pistrinae was largely recruited from criminals. The emperor Trajan incorporated about A.D. the college of Pistores (millers and bakers), but its mem bers were employers, not operatives. The work of a bakery is depicted in a set of bas-reliefs on the tomb of a master pistor named Eurysaces, who flourished about a century before the foundation of the college.

Regulation of Sale.

In the middle ages bakers were sub jected to special regulations in all European lands. These regu lations were supposed to be conceived in the interests of bread consumers, and no doubt were intended to secure fair dealing on the part of bread vendors. The legislators appear, however, to have been unduly biased against the baker, who was often beset by harassing restrictions. Bakers were formed into guilds, which were under the control, not only of their own officials, but of the municipality. In London the bakers formed a brotherhood as early as 1155, and were incorporated in 1307. There were two distinct corporate bodies concerned with bread making, the Company of White Bakers and the Company of Brown Bakers; these were nominally united in 1509, but the union did not become complete till the middle of the 17th century. In Austria, bakers who of fended against police regulations respecting the sale of bread were liable, until comparatively recent times, to fine, imprison ment and even corporal punishment. In Turkey the lot of the baker was hard. Baron de Tott, writing of Constantinople in the 18th century, says that it was usual, when bread went to famine prices, to hang a baker or two, which was promptly done. A bar barous punishment, inflicted in Turkey and in Egypt on bakers who sold light or adulterated bread, consisted in nailing the cul prit by his ear to the door-post of his shop. In France a decree of 1863 relieved bakers from many of the restrictions under which they previously suffered, but it did not touch the powers of the municipalities to regulate the quality and sale of bread. It left them the right conferred in 1791, to enforce the taxe du pain, the object of which was to prevent bakers from increasing the price of bread beyond a point justified by the price of the raw materials; but the right was exercised on their own responsibility, subject to appeal to higher authorities, and by a circular issued in 1863 they were invited to abolish this taxe officielle. In places where it exists it is fixed every week or fortnight, according to the average price of grain in the local markets.

In England an act of parliament was passed in 1266 for regu lating the price of bread by a public assize, and that system con tinued in operation till 1822 in the case of the city of London, and till 1836 for the rest of the country. The price of bread was determined by adding a certain sum to the price of every quarter of flour, to cover the baker's expenses and profit ; and for the sum so arrived at tradesmen were required to bake and sell 8o quartern loaves or a like proportion of other sizes, which it was reckoned each quarter of flour ought to yield.

Sale by Weight.

The acts now regulating the manufacture and sale of bread in Great Britain are one of 1822 (Sale of Bread in the City of London and within Iom. of the Royal Exchange), and the Bread Act of 1836, as to sale of bread beyond 1 om. of the Royal Exchange. The acts require that bread shall be sold by weight, and in no other manner, under a penalty not exceeding 40 shillings. This does not, however, mean that a seller is bound to sell at any particular weight ; the words quartern and half-quar tern, though commonly used and taken to indicate a 41b. and alb. loaf respectively, have no legal sanction. That is to say, a baker is not bound to sell a loaf weighing either 41b. or 21b.; all he has to do, when a customer asks for a loaf, is to put one on the scale, weigh it, and declare the weight. When bread is sold over the counter it is usual for the vendor to cut off and tender a piece of bread to make up any deficiency in the loaf. This is known as the "overweight." There is little doubt the somewhat misty wording of the Bread Acts lends itself from time to time to a good deal of fraudulent dealing.

When bread is sold over the counter, two loaves may be 6oz. short, while the piece of makeweight may not reach an ounce. The provision as to selling by weight does not apply to fancy bread and rolls. No exact definition of "fancy bread" has ever been laid down, and it must be largely a question of fact in each particular case. All bakers or sellers of bread must use avoirdu pois weight, and must provide, in a conspicuous place in the shop, beams, scales and weights, in order that all bread there sold may from time to time be weighed in the presence of the purchaser. The penalty for using any other weight than avoirdupois is a sum not exceeding 15 nor less than 4o shillings, and for failing to provide beams and scales a sum not exceeding £5. The acts also define precisely what ingredients may be employed in the manu facture of bread, and impose a penalty not exceeding £io nor less than £5 for the adulteration of bread. (See further under ADUL TERATION.) Although the Act of 1836 extends to the whole of Great Britain (Ireland excepted) out of the city of London and beyond Ioit of the Royal Exchange, yet in many Scottish burghs this act is replaced by local acts on the sale of bread. These are in all cases of a much more stringent nature, requiring all batch or household bread to be stamped with the reputed weight. Any deficiency within a certain time from the withdrawal of the bread from the oven is an offence.

It may be noted that the Acts of 1822 and 1836 define pre cisely what may and may not be sold as bread. It is laid down in section 2 that "it shall and may be lawful . . . to make and sell . . . bread made of flour or meal of wheat, barley, rye, oats, buckwheat, Indian corn, peas, beans, rice or potatoes, or any of them, and with any (common) salt, pure water, eggs, milk, barm, leaven, potato or other yeast, and mixed in such proportions as they shall think fit, and with no other ingredients or matter whatsoever." Sanitation of Bakehouses.—The sanitary arrangements of bakehouses in England were first specially regulated by the Bake house Regulation Act, 1863, which was repealed and replaced by the Factory and Workshop Act, 1878 ; this act, with various amending acts, was in turn repealed and replaced by the Factory and Workshop Act, 19o1. By the Act of 19o1 a bakehouse is defined as a place in which are baked bread, biscuits, or confec tionery from the baking or selling of which a profit is derived. The duty of enforcing the Act of 1863 was placed on the local authorities; since then there have been sundry vicissitudes in the respective jurisdictions of the factory inspectors and of the local authorities in the matter of sanitary supervision of bakehouses, but the position now reached is that the local authority administer the general sanitary provisions in the Factory Acts so far as regards bakehouses which are "workshops" (i.e., where no mechan ical power is used in aid of the manufacturing process) and also, as regards all bakehouses, certain special provisions which apply to bakehouses only.

The more important of these are: No water-closet, etc., must be within or communicate directly with the bakehouse; every cistern for supplying water to the bakehouse must be separate and distinct from any cistern supplying a water-closet ; no drain or pipe for carrying off sewage matter shall have an opening within the bakehouse. (2) The interior of all bakehouses must be limewashed, painted or varnished at stated periods. (3) No place on the same level with a bakehouse and forming part of the same building may be used as a sleeping place, unless it is effectually separated from the bakehouse and has an external window. (4) No underground bakehouse (one of which the floor is more than aft. below the surface of the footway of the adjoining street) shall be used as a bakehouse unless it was so used in 1901 and then only if certified by the district council as suitable for the purpose.

Mention may also be made of a welfare order made by the secretary of state in 1927 and enforceable by the factory inspec tors, which requires (inter alia) suitable washing facilities and drinking water to be provided.