Originally published on the Sustaining Time blog, part of an AHRC funded project which asks the question: What would be the time of a sustainable economy? Written by Alex Buchanan (University of Liverpool) In our previous post, we described some of the changes in the baking industry following the deregulation of bread prices in the UK in 1815. In this post we wanted to outline some of the temporal dimensions specific to baking that have been revealed in our preliminary research: Night-working. Long hours worked at night were the main factor that set baking apart from other crafts. Night working was promoted both by the consumer (wanting to purchase fresh bread before work in the morning) and the supplier (the journeyman working on commission, who needed to buy the amount of flour agreed with the miller or corn factor). The introduction of the free market encouraged longer hours and during the nineteenth century, bakers might have only 4-5 hours sleep each day. Yeast - bread-making was a lengthy process, needing to take into account the cycles of rising and kneading. Until the production of dried yeast, it needed to be nurtured as a living product, in the forms of barm or ferment - which remains true of traditional sourdough bread. In 1859 the aerated bread process, which needed no yeast, was patented by Dr John Daulish, founder of The Aerated Bread Company. This reduced the length of time taken in breadmaking from around 10 hours per loaf to around 2 - but the high costs of the machinery limited its take-up. Perishability - this limited bread production to the locality and required consumers to make regular purchases. In a fascinating article on the Halifax (Canada) baking and confectionary industry, we found a quotation from an 1868 petition by the Journeyman Bakers' Friendly Society "To the Master Bakers of Halifax", which puts the workers' hours of labour into a social and moral context designed to resonate with public opinion on respectability. In a moral and intellectual point of view it is nearly as bad, as we have no time for recreation, no moral improvement; no time to spend in the social or family circle. We have no time for the public meeting, lecture, concert or religious duty; the Sun shines in vain for us, the trees and plants may grow, and the flowers may bloom, but not for us. To us the delights of the country are a sealed book; to prepare for our early toil we have to go to bed, (those that have one), while the rest of the world is awake, and work while the rest of the world asleep, thus reversing the laws of nature. No wonder that some of us have recourse to stimulants in order to give a spur to our overworked and failing nature, and for the time to bury in oblivion our degraded position.' Modern breadmaking methods have reduced the need for night working, by cooling dough down to low temperatures - its fermentation is then halted until it is warmed up again. Modern methods, including par-baking and the use of steam ovens, have even enabled bread to be transferred directly from freezer to oven. The use of frozen dough has allowed for the introduction of on-site baking and the continuous supply of fresh bread in supermarkets etc. The return to artisan baking, however, means that some of the time conflicts experiences by bakers in the 1800s are being re-visited today. We’ll explore this in our next post.
References: Burnett, J., 'The Baking Industry in the Nineteenth Century', Business History, 5/2 (1963), pp.98-108 Collins, E.J.T., 'Food adulteration and food safety in Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries', Food Policy, 18/2 (1993), pp.95-109 Decock, P. and S. Cappelle, 'Bread technology and sourdough technology', Trends in Food Science & Technology, 16/1-3 (2005), pp.113-20 Gourvish, T.R., 'A Note on Bread Prices in London and Glasgow, 1788-1815', The Journal of Economic History, 30/4 (1970), pp.854-60 McKay, I., 'Capital and Labour in the Halifax Baking and Confectionary Industry during the last half of the Nineteenth Century', Labour/Le Travail, 3 (1978), pp.63-108 Ross, A.S.C., 'The Assize of Bread', The Economic History Review, 9/2 (1956), pp.332-42 Stern, W.M., 'The Bread Crisis in Britain, 1795-6', Economica, n.s. 31/122 (1964), pp.168-87 University of Durham, Special Collections and Archives, 'Bread through the Ages', available at http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dul0www3/asc/bread/control1.htm Webb, S. and B., 'The Assize of Bread', The Economic Journal, 14 (1904), pp.196-218 Originally published on the Sustaining Time blog, part of an AHRC funded project which asks the question: What would be the time of a sustainable economy? This post was written by Alex Buchanan (University of Liverpool) For many people the new economics is synonymous with the rise of the artisan economy. One of the flagships for this movement is the revival of artisan bread, which includes the rise of community bakeries, such as Homebaked Anfield and the campaign for Real Bread. In order to start to tease out the relationships between time and alternative economies we’ll be including case studies of a variety of new artisan businesses. However, we’ve also been really interested in the way many approaches to the new economics explicitly draw on the past for inspiration. So we will also be exploring how archive research might shed light on contemporary questions about economics and time. We’ve been doing some preliminary research into what kinds of records might give insights into baking methods and cultures. Part of this involved finding out more about the history of the baking industry, to identify what records might have been created. This research has already thrown up some interesting findings which relate to the time-dimension and economics of baking. Until 1815, bread-making was controlled by medieval legislation: the 'Assize of Bread' of 1266. This stipulated the size, weight and price of loaves according to the price of wheat and included other regulations for bread production. A number of books listing sizes and prices of loaves survive: we looked at one in the Liverpool University Special Collections as part of the 'Memories of Mr Seel's Garden' project; there's another one online here. The Assize did not prevent price fluctuation, but linked it to the grain market. Rather than competing against price as we do now, under this system, competition between bakers was based on bread quality, as it was illegal to produce cheaper loaves. This ideally led to better tasting bread, rather than simply cheaper bread. Although in times when flour was expensive, adulteration was common. During the eighteenth century, however, the monopoly of the craft guilds was breaking down and increasing numbers of bakers (often not master bakers, but journeymen acting as agents for millers and flour merchants) began to undercut the fixed price - and were hailed as the champions of liberty against the bastions of ancient privilege. After the end of the bread crisis and famine years of the late 1790s, many towns abandoned the Assize and a Parliamentary Committee appointed to enquiry into the matter in 1815 recommended that more benefits were likely to be incurred from free competition.
The actual results of deregulation, however, were revealed by H.S. Tremenheere's 1862 Report Addressed to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, relative to the Grievances complained of by Journeymen Bakers, with Appendix of Evidence, 3027, H.C. (1862). This documented an industry still dominated by artisan methods but in appalling conditions and for low financial reward, with prices kept down by low wages and adulteration. In particular, alum was added to flour to meet public demand for 'white' bread - perceived as being purer and therefore of higher quality. Under these circumstances, author John Burnett, writing in 1963, viewed the introduction of technology and changes brought by improved scientific understanding of the baking process, as well as the importation of grain from further afield, as advances which 'rescued the journeymen from the miseries of 1862'. We’ve found a number of interesting transformations in senses of time occurring during the process of deregulation, which we will outline in our next post. Alex Buchanan |
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