For Michelle Plumb:
The answers to most of your questions will probably be found in Elizabeth
David's book on bread and yeast cookery. Until you can secure a copy,
here are a few quotes for you from other sources.
"In Elizabethan times, four loaves were commonly made -- manchet, cheat,
celsus and cibarus. Manchet, the best, was a white, 6-ounce loaf of well
sifted flour. Cheat was a 1-pound wheaten loaf made of flour from which
much of the bran was removed. Celsus was whole wheat bread. Cibarus, a
very poor loaf, was 'appointed in all times for servants, slaves, and the
inferior type of people to feed upon.'
"Every rank had its appointed bread and an appointed amount of it. By
the middle of the 18th Century, this class consciousness of bread had
disappeared. White bread was ascendant as the diet of all. The cause
lay in improvements in agriculture and in certain economic pressures on
milling and marketing."
- _Breadcraft_ by Charles and Violet Schafer, Yerba Buena Press,
1974
"barm, n. ... a foamy yeast forming on beer or other malt liquors when
fermenting, and used as leaven in bread to make it rise and in alcoholic
liquors to make them ferment: also called brewers' yeast."
- _Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, unabridged, second
edition
"cracknel, n. ... 1. a hard, brittle biscuit. ..."
- _Ibid._
"quern, n. ... 1. a primitive hand mill for grinding grain, consisting
of two stone disks, one upon the other, the upper stone of which was
turned by hand.
"2. a small hand mill in which spices are ground."
- _Ibid._
As for your other questions: Have never before heard of kneading by
foot, but it makes perfect sense, especially if one was a professional
baker in the age before the Hobart. Have definitely heard/read of bakers
adulterating their flour with chalk, alum, lead, and bonemeal. A baker
could pay with his life in some places and times for doing this, as well
as for selling underweight loaves. Here are a few more quotes from
_Breadcraft_.
"Ancient Persian bakers who short weighted bread or adulterated it with
straw did so on the pain of ending in their own ovens. Early London
bakers for their infractions endured the humiliation of being displayed
in stocks or being pulled through the streets on a cart with bread or
whetstones hung around their necks.
"For the first infractions, they paid fines immediately on detection.
For continuing offenses, officials threw them on the mercy of the public.
Often as not, the people devised degrading punishments. Bribery of
officials by bakers was common."
"Because bread was the ordinary man's chief food for ages, its history
has been blackened by unscrupulous cheats. Emperor Justinian reaped a
fortune by having loaves short weighted and filled with ashes. As late
as the 18th Century, bakers in Constantinople were hanged for cause.
This peril led master bakers to hire stand-ins against the day they might
be haled into court. Let someone else, they said, be nailed by his ears
to the door of our shops if authorities come to arrest us.
"Until recent times, bakers in Austria who flouted laws governing bread
sales were fined, imprisoned and even beaten.
"In general, the baker nevertheless continued to be a man of standing,
as he had been in Roman times. At one time, the murderer of a baker
could expect to be fined three times more than one who murdered an
ordinary man. And Louis XI of France decreed that bakers should not
stand as sentinels for fear they would use that as an excuse for baking a
bad product."
"At long last some attempt was made to define bread legally.
Parliamentary Acts in 1822 and 1836 defined what could lawfully be sold
as bread in England. It had to be 'made of flour or meal of wheat,
barley, rye, oats, buckwheat, Indian corn, pease, 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."
Hope this helps.
Ron
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