by Lucy E. Zahnle

Created on: September 10, 2009

Humble, yet indispensable, bread has fed the peoples of the world, high-born and low, since ancient times. In medieval Europe, it figured in every meal for peasant or king. However, for those in power, bread proved useful in many ways besides mere eating.

Bread delineated the different levels of medieval society. At the dining table, the highest levels of a middle, upper-class, or even royal household ate the best, that is, the whitest bread the household could afford. Manchet bread, made of wheat flour sifted many times to remove most of the bran and other impurities, was the best bread to be had.

As one traveled down the medieval dining table, a sort of culinary social ladder, as it were, the bread became coarser, dropping from manchet to fine cheate, a wheat bread that was not as finely sifted as manchet and thus not quite as white, to coarse cheate, which was even less finely sifted. For those who could not afford course cheate, there was maslin, a bread made of a mixture of wheat and rye flour. Below maslin, one found the darker breads of the peasantry, breads made of rye, barley or oats or any combination of those three. For beggars and the abject poor, bread made of a gritty combination of bran, bean, pea, or lentil flour was available. Since the upper-classes deemed this bread suitable only for feeding their horses, it was known as horse bread.

Social standing in a household was indicated not only by the type of bread served at a given point along the table, but also by the amount of bread served. The higher the quality and the greater the quantity of bread a guest was offered, the more he or she was esteemed by the host. Because this custom gave one true insight into where he or she stood in the host's or master's household and regard, it could be used to send a subtle, yet pointed, message to those transgressing courtiers who had fallen out of their lord's favor.

The age of the bread was also an important indicator of class standing. Bread was considered unhealthy to eat fresh out of the oven for fear of indigestion, so it was never served the day it was baked. The highest members of the household received bread that was a day old, the second highest two days old, and so on down the line, each person receiving the aged loaves according to his or her rank.

Like the loaves that were fresh from the oven, bread that was four days old was considered no longer fit to eat because of the risk of indigestion, so the old loaves were used as trenchers to

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