Roman Methods of Bread-Making.
A Baker’s Shop at Pompeii.
This, at all events, seems to have been the shape in vogue about the time of the Christian era; but in the bas reliefs on the tomb of Eurysaces, who was a baker in a large way of business at Rome, they seem to be globular. These bas reliefs are most interesting, as they show the whole history of baking. First there is the purchase of the corn, and payment being made for it; then we see it ground, and sifted to separate the bran. Next a man is buying some flour. Then we see the dough being kneaded by horse-power, the bakers making it into loaves, the baker with his peel baking the loaves, which are afterwards carried in paniers to be weighed. Then there are the customers, and the bread being sent out for delivery.
Pliny tells us that there were no bakers at Rome until the war with King Perseus of Macedon, more than 580 years after the building of the city. The ancient Romans used to make their own bread, it being an occupation which belonged to the women, as we see is the case in many nations even at the present day. In those times they had no cooks in the number of their slaves, but used to hire them for the occasion from the market. The Gauls were the first to employ the bolter that is made of horse-hair; while the people of Spain made their sieves and meal dressers of flax, and the Egyptians of papyrus and rushes.
Many freedmen were engaged as bakers, and under the Republic it was one of the duties of the œdiles to see that the bread was properly prepared and correct in weight. Grain was delivered into public granaries by enrolled Saccarii, and it was distributed to the bakers by a corporation called the Catabolenses. A bakers’ guild (corpus or collegium pistorum), which long existed, was organised by Trajan, and this body, through its connection with the cura amonæ, became of much importance, and enjoyed various privileges. There were guilds of pistores and clibanarii at Pompeii. A great increase in the number of bakeries (pistrinæ, officinæ pistoriæ) afterwards took place at Rome, owing, probably, to the action of Aurelian in introducing a daily distribution of bread, instead of the old monthly distribution of grain that had been usual since the time of Gracchi.