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Victorian Bakers

(5 Posts)
TriciaF Thu 21-Jan-16 11:34:57

We watched the bread programme too, and it was amazing how labour- intensive most tasks were from growing the wheat, making the sourdough or brewer's yeast, preparation of the ovens, then you can start to make the bread.
Even water and the salt - which I don't think they mentioned.
Where I grew up, NE coast, the next village had a salt industry, it was made in saltpans from sea water.

goose1964 Thu 21-Jan-16 11:09:20

the one problem I have with this sort of program is that they never give the people taking part the skill sets that people would have, for this one they should have had them doing arm weight for weeks before so that their muscles didn't suffer wuite so much

I saw a stone age recreation programme a few years ago & they almost starved because no-one seemed to know what was edible & how to hunt without a gun, surely they should have had some sort of training on these

Deedaa Sat 16-Jan-16 21:12:25

The price of bread shocked me too, especially when you think how much of it we waste today. The thought of spending that much on bread that was full of sweat, chalk and alum was pretty appalling.

NanKate Sat 16-Jan-16 20:45:37

Gosh I hadn't realised bread was so expensive. I really enjoy programmes like this.

In fact coming up this week is a series on how Stone Age people survived. Volunteers will re-enact the lives of the Stone Age people.

chelseababy Sat 16-Jan-16 13:33:01

Caught up with first 2 episodes of this and I was really shocked that in c1840 a loaf of bread cost a quarter of a labourers daily pay. Even on a minimum wage (say £40 a day) that would equate to £10 a loaf!