In the early modern period, the wealthy ate foods such as beef, pork, lamb, veal, venison, and seafood in addition to bread and a few vegetables. However, for the majority of English people, bread was the staple food and the biblical staff of life
(Lloyd 37). Most days, commoners in early modern England ate bread and pottage, a thick stew of vegetables, grains, and peas or lentils.
A staple food made by mixing flour and water or other liquid (often with yeast or other leavening agent) to form a dough which is then cooked, usually by baking.
In this period in England, bread was made with flour ground from wheat, barley, rye, oats, peas, lentils, and even acorns. Wheat, which was often called
Upper-class citizens ate a different type of bread compared to the lower-class. The ideal loaf for upper-class citizens was white and soft, typically called
Pastries were quite popular as well, and savory pastry crusts were often wrapped around meat for wealthier citizens. Gervase Markham’s 1615
Of puff paste. Now for the making of puff paste of the best kind, you shall take the finest wheat flour after it hath been a little baked in a pot in the oven, and blend it well with eggs, whites and yolks all together, after the paste is well kneaded, roll out a part thereof as thin as you please, and then spread cold sweet butter over the same, then upon the same butter roll another leaf of the paste as before; and spread it with butter also; and thus roll leaf upon leaf with butter between till it be as thick as you make good: and with it either cover any baked meat, or make paste for venison.
This recipe is quite similar to modern-day croissant recipes, with the layers of butter between each layer of thin dough. It is a classic, multi-use recipe. Markham also discusses adding sugar to the dough later for fruit pies or tarts.
A more affordable recipe that the average citizen would most likely use on a day-to-day basis would be biscuits. Here is a recipe for biscuits used in 1672 by Constance Hall in a handwritten recipe book. This dish was called To make Cogs Biskett,
Take 3 pound of fine flower well dry’d, a Ounce of Carraway seeds, 6 spoonefull of suger Double Refin’d, 6 spoonefull of Ale, 6 Eggs, the whites of Two, and wett it with warm Milk 2 peny worth of safforn. lett it Lye to Rise.
Bouchard and Tersigni have an excellent translation of this recipe, and even include how to bake it properly in a modern kitchen.
Shows the interior of a large kitchen. In the center the pastry chef is removing a pastry from a wood-burning oven. On the right are two workers, one rolling out the dough and the other shaping it into a crust. On the right sits the proprietress accepting money from a woman who has just bought a small pie for the little girl sitting on her arm. All around are food and food-related items - finished cakes and pastries on a table in the foreground, sheaths of grain, cuts of meat and specially shaped pans hanging from the ceiling(Bosse)
We know from Gervase Markham that, during this time, ovens were primarily made from bricks or mud construction, preheated, then used to bake bread. The ideal oven should also be made narrow, square, and easily covered to keep the heat inside.
First, the baker had to build a fire with wood and let it burn to coals. Next, the baker swept the floor of the oven clean from ashes and other debris and made sure the temperature inside was hot. Thermometers were not invented until the 18th century, so in the early modern period, the only way to measure oven temperature was through observation. Lastly, the shaped loaves were placed inside and baked.
It was also important to incorporate things besides an oven in a bake-house, including troughs to knead dough, casks for leaven such as beer, and safes to hold flour, bran or other substitutes. Bakers also needed various meal sieves that could sieve coarse flour to very fine flour and a large table to knead and mold bread.
Food prices were heavily regulated in the early modern period. The following is a list of common foods and their prices in 1599:
For context, there are 12 pence (d) in 1 shilling (s), and 20 shillings in a pound (£). In London, a loaf of wheat bread was to be sold for around 1d depending on its size. To put the prices in even more perspective, in the same year of 1599, the Earl of Nottingham proclaimed a set amount that soldiers could be asked to pay for supper. For foot soldiers, that maximum amount was 3½d out of their 8d a day wage. That supper was mandated to include good wheaten bread
and lots of other protein sources necessary to keep the soldiers well-fed (Lloyd 40).
The price and weight of bread were rigorously controlled by local authorities. The Bakers’ Guild held the responsibility of enforcing the
All types of bread were sold for fixed prices for a half loaf or a full loaf. These prices did not change for centuries, but when wheat supplies decreased during a bad harvest for instance, the price then did go up for a smaller loaf of bread. This was why it was so important for regular citizens to improvise their bread baking ingredients by using different ingredients like rye, oats, and acorns.
The Worshipful Company of Bakers notes that the Bakers’ Guild enforced the Bread Assize from a 2-mile radius within London, or with a circumference of 12 miles around it, minus the city of Westminster. This Guild had legal power to enforce the Assize laws and determine fitting punishments for bakers who attempted to evade the regulations:
The penalties for more serious offences were on the first occasion for the offender to be dragged on a hurdle through the dirtiest streets of the City with the faulty loaf hanging from his neck. For the second offence he was pilloried for an hour, and if he broke the law a third time, his oven was pulled down and he had to forswear baking for evermore.
