Chapter 1: Introduction

“Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread?”

(Isaiah 55: 2)

Bread has been regarded as a staple food in many societies ever since its ‘invention’ several millennia ago, inspiring numerous metaphors still in regular use today.

Fig. 1.1. Supermarket bread aisle (Domokos 2009)

As of the early 21st century the inhabitants of the island of Britain consume approximately nine million loaves of bread every day. Baking is a highly industrialised and efficient sector of the British economy turning out some of Europe’s cheapest bread, yet visitors from other European countries regularly cite the lack of good bread as one of the main disadvantages of living in Britain (Whitley 2006, 3). This dissertation will look at the story of British bread over the last five centuries to some degree from the perspective of an ‘outsider’ (with a Central European background) frequently mystified by the popularity of the sliced and wrapped article known as ‘bread’ in this part of the world (fig. 1.1.).

1. 1. Aims and objectives

The study of bread is beset with a difficulty inherent to the study of any kind of food: Its subject is by definition a continually diminishing resource (Fenton 2007, 3). Archaeology has focussed on the structural remains of grain processing, such as milling, brewing and baking, often in the context of industrial landscapes (Palmer and Neaverson 2001, 55), and various other disciplines, including history, economics and ethnology, similarly tend to concentrate on one or two specific stages in the journey from field to table. This dissertation aims to present a more comprehensive analysis of the life of bread so to speak, from the cultivation of the soil through the reaping, threshing and milling of bread crops to the baking and eating of various forms of bread, arguing that developments in these processes over the last 500 years have combined to create the picture we see today, as well as addressing some more specific points such as regional differences, the rise of factory baking and potential reasons for the dominance of sliced wrapped bread in the Britain of today. It will investigate these issues using a multidisciplinary approach which is both appropriate to the study of the time period in question and required by the topic itself. It will not, however, deal in much detail with the transport and marketing of either bread crops or bread itself, two topics which are both too complex and wide-ranging to be included in a paper of this scale without sacrificing too much specific investigation.

1.2. What is bread? A point of definition

Surprisingly, very few of the written sources consulted for the purpose of this dissertation deem it necessary to define ‘bread’. The only clear definition encountered refers to prehistoric bread, which is described as consisting mainly of ground food plants, usually cereals, with the addition of a liquid (and sometimes leaven), made into a dough and baked in an oven or similar structure or roasted at/on an open fire, on embers or in ashes (Hansson 2002, 186-187). Collins English Dictionary, UK edition, 2007 defines ‘bread’ as follows: “a food made from a dough of flour or meal mixed with water or milk, usually raised with yeast or baking powder and then baked” (Collins English Dictionary 2007). This dissertation uses a definition which includes unleavened breads as well as those utilising legumes such as peas or beans and shall focus on what was considered everyday ‘bread’ in various time periods and regions.

1. 3. Literature review

Various aspects of bread are discussed in books written between the 16th and 19th centuries, often with the aim of instruction, thus reflecting as much ideals as actual circumstances of the periods in question. Andrewe Boord’s 16th century ‘Dietary of helth’, treating of the health implications of housing, clothing and diet, reflects the author’s medical background as well as his intended readership’s social standing (Boord 1576), while Gervais Markham’s ‘The English housewife’, with a strong moral message apparent from the title and itself a transcription of medical cures and recipes from various uncertain sources, is similarly indicative of the upper-class status of both author and readership, e.g. with regard to bread types and social standing (Markham 1615). In the 19th century Isabella Beeton’s ‘Household mangement’, covering a range of subjects as diverse as cookery, childcare and taxes, was aimed at the young middle class wife managing a household with servants (Beeton 1861), while Henry Stephens’ ‘Book of the farm’ is an extremely detailed manual for young farmers, dealing with every aspect of mixed agriculture including ploughing, cereal cultivation, harvesting and threshing (Stephens 1860).

Few if any works published to date attempt to cover the whole story of bread from cultivation to consumption by human beings, though Chris Petersen’s ‘Bread and the British economy’, a modified D. Phil thesis in economic and social history, has one of the widest approaches of the secondary sources considered for the purpose of this dissertation, dealing with the importance of bread in 18th and 19th century diets as well as the increasing dominance of wheat bread, technical developments in milling and baking and relevant legislation among others, with a lot of statistics and calculations as characteristic of an economic history text (Petersen 1995). A significant proportion of literature relevant to this topic comes from the field of folk-life studies/rural studies/ethnology, and while not archaeological publications themselves these deal with a lot of material culture; examples include several works by Alexander Fenton relating to different aspects of Scottish agriculture and rural life (Fenton 1976; 1985; 2007) as well as S Minwel Tibbott’s seminal book on Welsh domestic life (Tibbott 2002). As in the case of some specialised historical works (Blandford 1976), such volumes can have a tendency to get lost in the minutiae of their subjects (e. g. types of ploughs/ovens etc.) at the expense of the wider context, as well as being at times frustratingly vague with regard to timescales, although this is to some degree due to the nature of the field.

Recent television programmes aimed at a more general audience have dealt with agriculture, including cereal cultivation, in the 17th, 19th and 20th centuries; these include two BBC miniseries of the reality TV/costumed interpretation/experimental archaeology genre – ‘Tales from the green valley’ and ‘Victorian farm’ (including a tie-in book), which involved some of the same archaeologist and historian participants, and the more traditional BBC4 documentary series ‘Mud, sweat and tractors’ (Tales from the green valley: complete BBC series 2004; Victorian farm: complete BBC series 2008; Mud, sweat and tractors: the story of agriculture 2010). The latter example, while providing a good overview of 20th century developments in cereal cultivation, including the effects of agricultural policies and changing economic system, suffers from a considerable bias in favour of modern, large-scale, ‘conventional’ agriculture, with organic farming for instance reduced to little more than a footnote (Mud, sweat and tractors: the story of agriculture 2010).

Relevant archaeological works such as Martin Watt’s book ‘The archaeology of mills and milling’ (Watts 2002) and Palmer and Neaverson’s volume on industrial archaeology (Palmer and Neaverson 2001) focus on the milling stage of the story, which tends to leave the largest amount of structural remains, while renowned chef and cookery writer Elizabeth David’s book on ‘English bread and yeast cookery’, written against the background of the nascent revival of home baking in the 1970s, combines a historical overview of milling and baking with recipes (David 1977), and Felicity Lawrence’s investigative publication ‘Not on the label’ provides a disturbing insight into the modern baking industry and its use of various additives (Lawrence 2004).