We have lately seen rye bread exposed for sale in a few London shops, so, probably, there is a limited sale for it, although chiefly among the Germans; but in early times the bread consumed by men in our own country must have been as unpalatable as the rye bread of Germany or the Fladbrod of Norway, for in seasons of scarcity it was sometimes made of acorns steeped in water to destroy the bitterness; and even as late as 1546 Du Bellay, Bishop of Mans, in representing to Francis I. the misery existing in the provinces, assured him that in many localities the people had nothing to eat but bread made of acorns.*

There was also a sort of bread sold known as horse bread, in which beans and peas were the chief ingredients, nevertheless, even in the fourteenth century there would appear to have been different kinds of wheaten bread made and sold by bakers, the finest being the simnel bread before mentioned; the next quality was known as wastel, then came French bread called also puffe or cocket; after that came tourte, which must have resembled our whole-meal bread, and which was in use by the common people and in monasteries. Of this there was also an inferior sort known as trete, from which some of the fine flour had been sifted; and lastly there was black bread made of barley and rye.+

* In Tyndale's 'Sardinia,' p. 191, we read: 'The acorn-bread, which forms the general food of the people of Cagliari, is thus prepared. The acorns when shelled are put into a large seething-pot with water which has been strained through the ashes of burnt vegetable matter and clay. This lye extracts the bitterness of the acorn, and gives a consistency to the mixture, which is boiled down till it assumes a reddish-brown colour, when it is taken out, dried in the sun, and cut into cakes.'

+The ordinary food of the Russian peasant consists of black rye bread and cabbage broth thickened with oatmeal, but the famine has lately deprived them of even this meagre fare, and they have been compelled to eat bread largely composed of bark of trees, unwholesome herbs, earth, and sometimes a handful of rye.

Some of us are old enough to remember when every household, at least in the country, made its own bread; very delicious bread it was, too, sweet and wholesome, brown, without a lot of indigestible bran, and leavened with barm from home-made beer, sometimes rather difficult to procure, so that the family baking had to be put off till the yeast was forthcoming, and then it was necessary to borrow loaves of the neighbours, or to make unleavened cakes upon the hearth, using soda and tartaric acid or buttermilk by way of rising. Then, too, there was a friendly interchange among neighbours of newly-baked loaves, and not only so but of the use of the oven, Mrs. M. heating her oven one week and Mrs. N. the next; or sometimes the dough would be sent to a bakehouse, the tidy servant carrying it wrapped up in a blanket and sundry cloths, and making it up at the baker's, putting her mistress's name on it, according to the old nursery rhyme -

' Prick it, and dawk it, and mark it with D, And pop it in the oven for baby and me,' and paying a small sum for the accommodation. The baker's toll was regulated by law in the days of King John, and according to the 'Book of Days' was to be 'for his own labour, three pence and such bran as might be sifted from the meal,' whilst he was allowed to add 'to the prime cost of the wheat for fuel and wear of the oven the price of two loaves; for the services of three men, he was to add to the price of the bread three halfpence; and for two boys, one farthing; for the expenses attending the seal, one halfpenny; for yeast, one halfpenny; for candle, one halfpenny; for wood, threepence; and for wear and tear of the bolting-sieve, one halfpenny.' *

* See Chambers's 'Book of Days,' p. 119, etc.

There would seem to have been a great many regulations as to the making and selling of bread, and adulteration was common then as now, for sometimes the bakers would put fine bread on the outside and coarse inside, till an enactment was made forbidding the practice, and also the sale of bran loaves or of flour mixed with bran, whilst the bakers of brown bread were forbidden to sell white, and every loaf had to be sealed so as to certify to the buyer its quality.