h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A cynic is supposed to know the cost of everything and the value of nothing; I'm not sure about this. What fascinates me though is how the relative costs of things has shifted (have shifted?) with mechanisation.

Almost all of the bread in Zenadu is baked by Z. And he doesn't just put the ingredients into a bread-maker and click a button. Or use bread mixes from Tescos. Or indeed yeast. Ho no. We have bread bowls in the washing up most days, and sinister little tupperware containers of "starter" in the fridge. (Note to self, remove and wash out the worst of these).

As he was kneading the most recent lot (brown bread rolls, to go with the soon-to-be-cooked soup to-use-up-the-tomatoes) he told me that bread was the greatest expense in houses in Pompeii. (Note to self, go to Pompeii).

Now before mechanisation, the only real benefit of bread as a foodstuff would be the storability of grain. Grain is very labour intensive, there's the harvesting, then there's the winnowing to sort the wheat from the chaff, then there's the grinding. Grinding in a quern is backbreaking work and ox- water- and wind-mills were truly revolutionary. It's only once you have flour that people like Z can start the three- or four-day process of bread-making.

How much easier to pick a few apples, chomp on a few carrots or scramble a couple of eggs? But of course apples, carrots and eggs aren't as storable or transportable as grain.

Many years ago I was in the museum in Cirencester and discovered that a legionary's leather tunic was a fraction of the cost of the centurion's woollen one. And for the same reason; the wool had to be washed, spun and woven by hand, but curing the same square-footage of leather involved a fraction of the labour.

Plus ça change, plus c'est changé.

Actually the last few days bread have used bakers yeast, and not sour dough. I should go back to using sour dough, the results were interesting.

But wasn't human work much much cheaper then?

I love baking bread, but I have never used a starter. Perhaps that's a discussion better suited to a quick message on Z's space, though.

Fascinating, though, that some things were so costly because they were so labor-intensive at the time. Or which now-common items were luxuries because they didn't store well.

Good point. The machines of the Roman Empire really were the bodies of slaves, which is one of the reasons why they felt no great need to invent labour-saving machinery. But yYou still had to feed and clothe your slaves, for example. It's the way that things have changed relative to each other: no matter how cheap your slaves, it still took more work to produce a piece of cloth than a hide of the same size.

Ice. Ice was an incredible luxury.

ok whats a starter

It's basically some flour and some water left in the airing cupboard (or somewhere else that's about 25 degrees C) until it goes off a bit. Then you use the natural yeasts that grow to raise your bread.

I don't have anyplace at home that's that warm right now. When I'm rising my dough, I wrap it in a towel and set it in the hall closet where the furnace is, and switch the thermostat up just enough to keep it warm in the closet for the hour or two the dough needs to rise. But it'd never stay warm enough long enough to do a starter. I'll have to try it when the weather warms up.

what 2legs calls "poolish". Here in Germany, it's Sauerteig.

ta!

You don't have to ferment your own sourdough starter. Once you've got one all you have to do is 'refresh' it, add some extra flour and water the day before you want to bake.

Or you can get some off the interwebs.

http://carlsfriends.net/

And although oysters are a luxury now, up until the 19th century, they were a cheap and common foodstuff, sold by volume.

Ah, that's a whole different kettle of fish, Rosemary, and interesting in its own right. In late medieval times the poor 'prentices of London complained bitterly at being fed too much salmon.

B