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 serve food. These trenchers were the modern equivalent of plates. A diner might use two, three, or four of them during a meal, depending on his social status although lower servants received only one. After a meal, the trenchers, which were not usually eaten, were thrown away, fed to dogs, or given to the poor. Bread trenchers were also used as saltcellars.
Bread was also handy as an eating utensil at the medieval table. Strips of bread were employed as spoons or sops to serve oneself from a communal bowl or to soak up gravy from a heavily sauced dish. According to Bridget Henisch in her book, "Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society," household servants surreptitiously used slices of bread in each hand as potholders to carry hot metal vessels to the dining table. It is unclear why the servers had to be secretive about the practice. Perhaps the lord might have frowned upon it as wasteful?
Medieval bakers shaped their loaves by hand, of course, and thus the bread that came out of the oven was round. The natural shape of the bread was not acceptable to the fashionable nobleman, so round bread was squared off around the sides before it was set upon the table. This squaring allowed any hard or ash contaminated crusts to be removed before the bread was served. The discarded crusts were usually given to the poor or fed to the animals, but they were sometimes used as an ingredient for other dishes as well.
Bread was also a form of wealth. Along with other foods, bread was used to pay everyone from royal court retainers to field workers at harvest time. The type, quality, and amount of bread that the workers received was usually agreed upon in advance. In some instances, workers went on strike after they had not, in their opinion, been paid the quantity or quality of bread they believed they had earned.
Bread was offered as a gift on holidays, usually from the master to his retainers or subjects. At Christmas, it was the custom for a lord to provide a Christmas meal for his servants and vassals, which included a better quality bread than they normally received.
Because ovens were large and expensive, most people did not have one in their homes. They bought their bread from a baker. Some thrifty housewives made their own bread dough at home and took it to a baker who baked it for a small fee. In the countryside, the local lord often maintained an oven, charging the populace a fee for its use. This practice continued long after feudalism waned.
Bread was a very lucrative product for medieval bakers. The bakers of Chartres found business so profitable that they were able to donate several stained glass windows for that city's famed cathedral.
The money to be had in the bread game was also attractive to thieves and con artists. Underweight and adulterated loaves became such a problem that, in 1266, Henry II of England called the first Assize of Bread and Ale. The bread assizes set the number and prices of the various sized loaves a baker could make from a "quarter" (about eight bushels) of wheat. The price of bread was tied to the price of grain and could vary from region to region and month to month.
Although the rules were set out plainly in the Assize, many bakers cheated, baking light loaves or using spoiled grain or bad dough or even adulterating the flour with sand. Along with thrift, this was an additional incentive to many housewives to make their dough at home and pay the baker to cook it. However, even this precaution did not save them from fraud.
In 1327, a London baker, John Brid, created a special table with which he scammed his dough-baking customers. He had a circle somewhat smaller than an average loaf cut into the table, then returned the disk that had been cut out so that it filled the circle and made the table look whole again. The disk was fashioned so that it could be lowered like a platform through the circle from under the table. He had his unsuspecting customers place their unbaked loaves on the table atop this circle. A servant hidden under the table lowered the disk and tore away some dough from the bottom of each loaf. In this way, Baker Brid collected enough dough to bake quite a few loaves, which he then sold as his own, while his customers were none the wiser.
In medieval society, bread provided nourishment, implied status, doubled as eating utensils and dishware, paid wages, made a fine gift, made some bakers rich, and drove others into lives of crime. Although not touched upon in this article, it also held great religious significance. Consider all of this the next time you butter your toast, for you are about sink your teeth into history.
Sources:
Brears, Peter. All the King's Cook: The Tudor Kitchens of King Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace. Souvenir Press. London, England, 1999.
Hammond, Peter W. Food and Feast in Medieval England. Alan Sutton Publishing, Inc. Dover, New Hampshire, 1993.
Henisch, Bridget Ann. Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society. Pennsylvania State University Press. University Park, Pennsylvania, 1976.
Lorwin, Madge. Dining with Will Shakespeare. Atheneum. New York, New York, 1976.
Tannahill, Reay. Food in History. Stein and Day. New York, New York, 1973.