Warm Bread

Many a time I have enjoyed consuming warm bread, preferably with butter, bought from Marshals at Gedney Hill in Lincolnshire. Sadly no more the bakery in that shop has gone the way of many family businesses and is replaced by a Morrisons Local shop. I never realized that it was once an offence to sell warm bread until I spotted this headline from August 24^th 1917:

“Selling Warm Bread at Holbeach – Bakers Heavily Fined – Goes Mouldy Down the Marsh if Taken Stale.”

In 1917 these were the headlines that saw Messrs. J Wright and Thomas Kemp, two bakers at Holbeach, summonsed for selling bread which had not been made 12 hours at Holbeach.

P.C. Ketchless had seen Mr. Kemp delivering bread and found 16 new loaves in his cart. Mr. Kemp claimed that when short of old bread he made it up with new freshly baked bread. He was fined £1 for his sin.

Mr. J. Wright had been caught with over 30 loaves in his delivery cart that were still warm. He explained to the magistrate that he could only deliver down the marshes twice a week and if he took anything other than new bread it got to be mouldy before being consumed. Despite this he was fined £3.

What was behind such an apparently draconian measure?  The country entered 1917 facing severe food shortages thanks to the success of the German U-Boat campaign. Imported food stuffs for such staples as flour, wheat, barley and sugar were under extremely short supply and the staple of bread was at risk of becoming unavailable, or unaffordable. Food poverty is not brought about by supply alone, but by price and affordability. To prevent this the government took actions to eke out the supply of wheat. In January 1917 Lord Davenport, the wartime Food Controller, used his wartime powers to disallow the feeding of wheat to animals. He also made it law for millers to extract from wheat an average of 76% and this had to be achieved by such methods as re-milling the wheat husks or adding up to 10% barley, maize, rice or oats to the milling.

In addition to this were strict controls on the price of bread and an edict disallowing the sale of any bread until 12 hours after it has been baked. The reasoning behind this is that the consumption of old bread had been found to drop by 5% over the consumption of freshly baked bread. It was also claimed by the Ministry that stale bread was more nutritious. Whether this is true is questionable, however, stale bread does tend to retain its nutrition and the breakdown of starch as it goes stale can ensure the body  consumes it more slowly.

However, it does appear that the Holbeach magistrates were a lot fairer than some in other parts of the country where gaol sentences were handed out alongside three figure fines.

Bread