Bread: The Practical Applications. Part 1: Buying from a Baker

Suppose you wish to find the legal price of bread at a particular date in medieval England.

Below I have converted the Assize of Bread regulations into a more convenient form. The first column is the price of wheat in shillings per bushel. This is how those prices are expressed in Gregory Clark's data series. Multiply by eight if you want the price per quarter of wheat, which is how wheat prices are expressed in the regulations, and very frequently in medieval sources.

The second is the legal weight for a farthing loaf of fine white wastel bread in ounces avoirdupois when wheat sells at the preceding price. In the regulations they are expressed in tower pounds.

0.250 56.0
0.313 42.0
0.375 29.6
0.438 25.9
0.500 22.2
0.563 18.5
0.625 16.8
0.688 15.2
0.750 14.0
0.813 12.9
0.875 11.8
0.938 11.2
1.000 10.5
1.063 9.9
1.125 9.3
1.188 8.9
1.250 8.4
1.313 8.0
1.375 7.6
1.438 7.3
1.500 7.0
1.563 6.7
1.625 6.5
1.688 6.2
1.750 6.0
1.813 5.7
1.875 5.6
1.938 5.4
2.000 5.2
2.063 5.1
2.125 4.9
2.188 4.8
2.250 4.7
2.313 4.5
2.375 4.4
2.438 4.3
2.500 4.2

We also have different grades of bread, expressed in the weight of a farthing loaf relative to wastel.

Pain-demeine/payne demayne 0.98
Simnel/symnell (boiled and clean) 0.99
Wastel/wastell 1.00
First cocket (same grain and bolting as wastel) 1.01
Cocket of corn of lesser price 1.04
Clean wheat/wheten/whetebred 1.56
Treat:/Panis Bisus 2.00
Loaf of all corns of a quatern 2.07

Simnel, wastel and first cocket seem to have differed in the moistness of the loaf rather than the fineness or quality of the flour. Manchet seems to have been a similar grade. The royal assize regulations do not mention pain-demeine, but York's put it a bit finer than wastel.

Treat, just one step up from the lowest grade of wheat bread, is easy to remember at half the price per pound of wastel.

So in 1388, when grain was relatively cheap at .425 shillings/bushel, wastel farthing loaves should have weighed 26 oz., wheaten bread 40, and a coarse loaf of unsifted flour 54.

But an adult living in that year would remember the bad year of 1381, when farthing wastel weighed 14 oz., wheaten 22. and even the loaf from unbolted flour only 29.

Memorandum Book of York, 1411-1412 in Archaeological review. A journal of historic and pre-historic antiquities. 1900. London: D. Nutt. Vol 1. P 130