Medieval Times
The growth of towns and cities throughout the Middle Ages saw a steady increase
in trade and bakers began to set up in business. Bakers' guilds were introduced
to protect the interests of members and to regulate controls governing the
price and weight of bread. By Tudor times, Britain was enjoying increased
prosperity and bread had become a real status symbol: the nobility ate small, fine
white loaves called manchets; merchants and tradesmen ate wheaten cobs while the
poor had to be satisfied with bran loaves.
c 1066
Hair sieves were introduced to help sift the bran from flour, leading to finer
white bread.
1086
The Domesday Book. Watermills were shown as the prime source of milling.
1150
Bakers formed guilds to protect them from manorial barons and in 1155 London
bakers formed a brotherhood.
1191
The first recorded windmill in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
1202
King John introduced the first laws governing the price of bread and the
permitted profit.
1266
The Assize of Bread. This body sat to regulate the weight and price of loaves.
The first bread subsidy was given - 12 pennies for eight bushels of wheat made
into bread. (A bushel of wheat is the actual weight of 8 gallons of wheat -
this could vary according to the hardness or dryness of the grain). If a baker
broke this law he could be pilloried and banned from baking for life.
1307
White bread bakers and brown bread bakers formed separate guilds. In London the
Bread Street market defended London bread, forcing rural competitors to sell at
uncompetitive prices.
1400
Chaucer wrote The Miller's Tale, pointing to the greedy ways of millers and
their suspicious standing in society.
1569
Queen Elizabeth I united the white and brown bakers to form The Worshipful
Company of Bakers.
1666
The Great Fire of London, said to have been started by a baker, totally
destroyed the milling and baking industry in the capital.