International Socialist Review (1900) Vol 17

INTERIOR OF GERMAN BAKESHOP IN
THE MIDDLE AGES.
left behind in Rome. And when with the
fall of Rome civilization itself fell, the
knowledge of baking bread became, like
other things, a lost art.
The western Gauls were the first who had
learned bread making while still under the
Roman regime, and they are credited with
having first discovered and used yeast as a
means for leavening the bread dough. Bread
making in France remained domestic until
the period of Charlemagne, when we first
hear of public bakers.
Whatever there was in the way of bread
making during this period was crude and
did not show much progress. The centuries
were pregnant with strife and war and
developments of a political character. The
industrial development was practically at a
standstill. The trades in the larger cities
were hide-bound by laws, conventions and
customs which had found outward expression
in the formation of guilds. And these
did not allow for individual achievement
along new and progressive lines.
Not until the exploitation of the laws of
physics and chemistry had stirred the spirit
of invention in the nineteenth century does
the baking industry begin to turn to machinery
in the place of hand-work. Lem-
bert, the Paris baker, may justly be calle'd
the father of modern machine baking, inasmuch
as his dough kneading machine ( 1810)
was the foundation of the improved Fontaine
and Boland kneaders, which achieved
considerable success between 1835 and 1850.
The baking of bread from flour or
parched grains by means of heat is the most
860
OLD STYLE OVEN IN USE THROUGHOUT
EUROPE IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES.
ancient of human arts. It is remarkable
that an industry producing such an important
commodity as bread, and an industry
old as civilization itself, should have developed
so slowly until comparatively recent
years.
Probably no other trade has made such
slow progress as had the baking industry
up to the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
However, during the last twenty-five
years it has made marvelous advancements,
through the use of automatic machinery and
the scientific developments of its processes.
A few years since it was estimated that
twenty per cent of all the bread consumed
was produced by the baker—the other eighty
per cent being baked in the home. This
condition is rapidly changing, and in the
very near future at least eighty per cent of
all the bread baked will be produced in modern
sanitary bakeries. Recent inventions
and scientific discoveries, the establishment
of sunlight bakeries, with their scrupulous
cleanliness, the sanitary handling of the finished
product and the modern system of delivering
fresh bread each day, naturally
enough stimulate the increasing demand for
baker's bread. The popularity of the bread
will continue to increase because of the con-
stant improvement of the product, due to
the baker's better knowledge of fermentation,
better knowledge of all the ingredients
entering the loaf, more sanitary methods of
production, and because of the absolute
cleanliness in the handling of the baked loaf.
The modern baker uses an absolutely
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