The Most Important Job In The World - The Baker

You are the

most

important

person in the city and you keep the local society together. The men and women in your community who work every day to feed their families depend on you. Without you, people will go hungry, even the homeless; There would be civil unrest in the streets if it weren't for your constant routine. The very fabric of humanity is woven by your hands. Can you believe this is all because of bread? As a

baker

, you have a responsibility to your community to be able to bake this bread, bake it well, bake it to a certain standard, and in many situations, the

baker

took an oath.

In front of the community because this is the

most

important

job in the

world

. Not everyone can become a baker, you almost have to be born into the trade. Many, many people started as apprentices and not everyone can be an apprentice. You really have to be strong enough for this job. They carry heavy bags of flour, they carry huge baskets of bread through the streets to sell them. You start young as a baker. The bakers of a community are part of a guild to the point that they even attend parades and are all together and dressed the same in a uniform.

And in this union situation the community bakers have to compete with each other but also support each other while working within that community. Why was the baker important? Why didn't people bake bread at home? Not everyone has an oven at home; In fact, most people don't have an oven at home. And they certainly can't afford to turn it on every day; It takes a lot of fuel to light a small oven. The baker has a huge oven and has to start it in the morning, but he bakes for the whole town. And not just bread but people bring other things to the baker to bake.

You could bring a large pie or a whole leg of venison. The customer is everyone in the city, from the richest house to the poorest house. And it's interesting that there is a loaf of bread that represents each level of society. Whether it is the most refined bread for the rich man's table or the coarsest dark bread for the poor house. The reason bread is so important is that it is the only thing the common man can survive on. And you don't need to cook it, you can just buy it and eat it and that's all you really have to have.

We will find entries in a diary where an author will talk about a meal that seems very complete and will complain about the lack of bread because of how important it was. As a baker, you must bake three types of bread for the community. A white bread is baked sometimes called fine bread, a medium bread is baked and is sometimes called medium bread or simply wheat bread and then a low class bread, a cheap whole wheat bread and is usually called homemade bread. Here you have our fine wheat bread, this is the one that everyone wants.

And it's kind of a simple bread. If you expect to put butter on it, it's not full of flavor. This is our wheat bread, the mediocre bread, the cheapest bread. And it has that nice wheat flavor, it's a little bit denser and it's actually tastier. We come to homemade bread, very economical: the bread that poor people can afford and costs less than half. And it is a dense meal full of flavor. It has that wonderful signature that comes out that's the thing about white bread: you get the whole meal in one slice of bread. As a baker, you face many challenges and one of the biggest is regulation.

Bread has been regulated for thousands of years, the Romans regulated bread and are regulating many different aspects. Exactly what the bread contains is white bread, it is whole wheat bread, it is homemade bread. And you are regulating the weight of the bread, your bread has to weigh a certain amount. Your bread also has to have a particular price and each loaf has to be marked and each loaf has to have an initial. Who you are as a baker also has to say what type of bread it is and might even say how much the bread is supposed to weigh.

And if you do not put these marks on your bread, your bread may be lost and given to the poor house. There are also challenges with seasonality and supply. It is very difficult to bake bread if it is too cold outside. You need to proof your bread for the yeast to work and if it's too cold it just won't rise. Yeast is a problem when it's hot or cold. The brewer where the yeast comes from gives you yeast at the best time of year, either spring or more likely fall, but when the cold winter hits they don't brew beer and you have no supply of yeast. .

There were times when yeast was in high demand and very difficult to obtain. You will have problems getting flour, we have poor harvests, perhaps the weather is cold or wet and the wheat harvest is a failure and the flour that finally reaches you is of very low quality and is barely good for bread. The baker has to be fast, he has to be able to make substitutions within the limits of the law and bake bread for the people who need it every day. If you don't get the people the bread they need, there will be civil unrest and sometimes even violence against your store and you because they want bread now.

And there have even been bread riots throughout history. It's one of the reasons why bread is so regulated. As a baker, what do you do when you can't get enough flour to bake your bread or it's too expensive? This happens a lot and there are certain things you can do, most of them right and that don't comply with all the regulations. You can add other types of flour; Maybe you'll add barley flour or rye flour to your bread. It is not exactly what the regulations say but in certain circumstances it is the only thing you can do.

There are other times when you add things to the bread to make it look whiter. So they would add alum to the bread or they would add chalk to the bread. There can be several reasons for doing this, sometimes you are simply putting in a cheap ingredient and one that is heavy so you can make your bread cheaper. Or if you can't get enough wheat, you can add chalk to make it rise better. It's against the law, if you get caught, you will be punished. If a baker or brewer is guilty of not having observed the size for the first, second or third offense, he will be fined, unless the infraction is serious, and many times the baker will be taken to the pillory.

The reality is that breaking the law by a baker is not that common, this profession is very satisfying. The community needs bread. I love the crust when it comes out of the earth and the oven, they are so different from anything else that you can smell the difference when it comes out of the clay oven and the texture is different. I think it has to do with that trapped moisture. which is simply not achieved in a modern oven. Bakers were admired for what they provided to the community: they provided nutrition, fuel for workers, and survival for the poor.

What you do is truly the most important job in the

world

. "Wow, I remember the last time I ate so much bread."