BBC - Victorian Bakers Series 1 (2016) Part 1 1830s

Victorian Bakers

Four modern bakers bake their way through the era that gave us modern baking as we know it - the reign of Queen Victoria. Experts Alex Langlands and Annie Gray join them to tell the incredible story of our daily bread.

Part 1 1830s

The journey begins in 1837, when bread was the mainstay of most diets and bakers were at the heart of every community. A rural bake house has been kitted out exactly as it would have been in the 1830s. The bakers must get to grips with centuries-old methods of breadmaking and that means doing absolutely everything by hand. The first loaves are made with heritage wheat flour and brewers' yeast in a tiny wood-fired oven. It is bog standard bread that fed Victorian rural workers but to modern palettes it is an absolute revelation. Fifth-generation baker John Swift gets a taste of the bread his ancestors once made and artisan baker Duncan is in his element in this unhurried, organic world. There is no shop, so the bakers deliver door-to-door. For industrial baker John Foster, who deals with customers as far afield as China, the fixed demand and lack of competition enjoyed by Victorian bakers, is an utter joy.

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