How Bakers Could Make Good Money In Victorian England | Victorian Bakers | Absolute History

across britain bakers work to feed our passion for bread and cake but where did this 4 billion pound a year industry come from to find out four professionals are going back in time they're baking through 63 years which transformed their trade and our diet forever the age of the victorians from the rural bakeries of the 1840s where baking had barely changed for centuries to the sweat and toil of the urban bakery at the height of the industrial revolution to luxurious high street retailers at the dawn of the 20th century this time the bakers are being set to work in one of the many london suburbs built by the victorians crouch end hello bakers how are you welcome to 1900. at this point in britain's history the empire is at the height of its powers and london is the biggest city in the world you'll probably find it looks recognizably modern and that's because the late victorians built so much of what we see around us in the 21st century crouch ends grand high street was built in the 1890s the decade when victoria celebrated her diamond jubilee oh wow check this out this bakery has been serving customers continuously since then and for the next week it's being taken back in time starting with one window look what we've got we've got a shop we're just we're not just bakers anymore we're confectioners pastry cook cake baker lots more sweet stuff all the naughty things are out and we got vienna and fancy breads yeah and it looks like the money is no object by what's in the window what is on the window the shop is a new development for the bakers previously in their victorian experience they've had to deliver what they've faked cool should we head in okay out front this shop will keep serving 21st century customers wow but its bakery outback has been taken back to 1900. love these ovens look at these artisan duncan glenn dinning likes to make bread the old-fashioned way but he's still grateful for gas-fired ovens not a single sign of any coal anyway same goes for fifth generation family baker john swift yeah it's the way it's built it's just beautiful oh wow fancy cake maker harpreet borah immediately spots more signs that she'll be busy look at all of these jams and for the first time in their victorian experience the bakers will have some mechanical assistance music to the ears of bread factory boss john foster an artifact mixer fantastic look at that bad boy yeah but this is a beautiful mix of this first impressions amazed phenomenal i love the lack of the coal heap well exactly i mean one of the great benefits is of course gas and electricity you know we really have modern technology and you probably also saw the range of goods that are on offer now you're not just baking bread and previously there were separate trades for confectionery biscuit makers cake makers etc etc but now we're in 1900 all of those are rolled into one and of course you know you're on a busy affluent victorian high street so you have to keep an eye on quality and novelty when we know in the late victorian period that was the way in which you made your money so the very first thing you're going to be doing is not bread it's going to be pastry oh wow and of course harpreet i can see already you're breathing a sigh of relief definitely when you look around you can kind of see all of the naughty things which is quite nice do you feel like you're in your element there yes i actually do so far cake entrepreneur ha preet hasn't been impressed with the amount of bread and braun demanded in the 19th century i actually don't think i could have been a victorian baker because the level of graft that was required in terms of kneading those doughs i was just physically not strong enough to do it and i was really looking at hopefully slightly more sophisticated products thank you very much now harpreet will be making fancier stuff and the team will be working in more sophisticated uniforms by 1900 bakers were keen to shed their reputation for being uncouth sweaty manual workers shirt and tie stayed on at all times and hygiene was preserved by means of sleeve protectors i look like i'm actually gonna like you know have to deliver a cow you know straight in out it comes bakers were dressed like high-end restaurant chefs reflecting all the new skills they were expected to demonstrate looking like the pillsbury doughboy oh god [Laughter] you've got to admit we're starting to take care of the things and the products we've got protection i was sweating and coughing and generally i didn't care about the dough in the last one and now i'm wearing a hat to make sure i don't get hair in it [Music] the baker's set to work making rich victorian recipes for short and puff pastry which they'll use to make some of the tarts and turnovers popular with customers in nineteen hundred okay so no expense spared earlier in the victorian era eggs and sugar were still used only in small quantities by the average bakery the place that we left all we were producing it was subsistence living it was surviving basically yeah whereas now this is about stuff your face stuff your face and actually treat yourself good enough for you i reckon so yeah butter once you sparingly is now laid on in slabs and see look what i want to do is just going to go on there and so then this comes over here and it smells wonderful there's a lovely lovely buttery butter it's a beautiful smell yeah it's yellow when was the last time we saw anything yellow it's been white and pasty and gray and now you've got these rich colors and maybe baking at this point must have been so exciting for the baker all these new things all these new ingredients fantastic and then he's watching the money go in as well advice on the most profitable pastries can be found in the modern baker confectioner and caterer all six volumes of it these are written by john kirkland who founded the national school of bakery in 1899 and as you can see they're going to be slightly more comprehensive than some of the books that you've used before they don't just go through recipes and you'll see they go through recipes in quite a lot of detail but they've also got the science so there's a lot about yeast a lot about gluten they also go through shop fittings they go through pricing they go through absolutely everything book three is tarts and small pastries here we go guys for a good class trade the pan should be rather small as the large tarts appear common in course so we don't want the large tarts the bigger the tart the better in all seriousness at this time it seems as though if you could make your product more towards the elite spectrum that's how you would actually be onto a winner the manual illustrates over 30 pastries sold in late victorian shops the bakers are starting with four of these including madeira tarts and the classic jam variety it just needs to be as thin as you can possibly go while still being able to pick it up thinner much much thinner too thick because of her 21st century expertise harpreet has taken charge you know the deeper trays are the rose ones in 1900 a master baker or foreman would have been managing the first second and third hands i mean this is this is just really really weird i'm normally a bread maker and i would be more comfortable making bread to be fair but i've got half breed here bossing me around which i'm happy with so let's stick with what we've got they were into their interesting jams have a sniffer at that part oh this is well that's delicious and you've got a green gauge going in the bottom i've got the green gauge being piped into the bottom of my madeira charts in a relatively small high street bakery like this it was most productive for staff of all grades to share the workload whatever they were making this need for flexibility had meant bakers learning new skills at great speed just a generation before bread was all most would ever make it must have been a nightmare for them to get their heads round it and kind of reevaluate you know where their job roles were and and what they were expected to do they would have walked in and they'd go right here's a palette knife put the dough scraper down you're now making these cakes they would have been like what on earth are you talking about and actually in modern day life it's an absolute rarity that a bread maker is also a cake maker it just does not happen but baker's lives had to change in the late victorian period because of what was happening to the one product that had always kept them in business for centuries bread had been absolutely central to the british diet its fortunes began to change in the last decades of the victorian era at first it seemed for the better from the 1880s for perhaps the first time in british history good quality bread became affordable for everyone and this was all thanks to victorian ingenuity from the steam ships that brought cargos of wheat across the atlantic from north america to the giant steam-powered roller mills that ground it down into fine reliable flour this has been a dream for social reformers and for the hungry poor bread got cheaper just as average wages were rising bizarrely that was when things got harder for bakers between 1885 and 1914 the consumption of bread in britain practically halved turned out people linked bread with poverty as soon as they had more money to spend they preferred to eat more of other foods like meat bread would never again be so central to our diets the average britain today eats less than a quarter of the amount consumed by a typical victorian [Music] that might have spelt the end for thousands of bakery businesses had it not been for another big food trend of the victorian era consumption of sugar per head in britain quadrupled in the 19th century once it was a luxury used sparingly in tea but by 1900 with improved access to sugar plantations throughout the empire it became much more widely available britain had acquired the sweet tooth which troubles our waistlines to this day and sales of chocolates cakes and pastries were soaring bakers saw an opportunity to expand into these luxurious and more profitable markets so it's from this point onwards that they start to sell the range of goods which we still find in high street bakeries today as ever the baker was at the mercy of bigger changes in our tastes society and the economy have a look they look really good don't they yeah right should we set these down and get the next move in according to accounts from the time the profit margin on small pastries could be up to 60 triple the amount that could be made on bread oh look at that what wonderful confection of heaven is this mmm those are so good they're buttery and crisp and really good layers of pastry flakiness they are good tastes good what the bakers haven't been able to produce however is what three of them love most now we're in an era where flour is cheaper we're finally able to make it kill us amazing bread incredible tech new technologies and everything and no one wants it two steps forward one step back isn't it we've gone we were at a moment where we're thinking great everything's looking rosy for the baker and things are looking up and now we find that in actual fact he's got to diversify or he's going to be the same golden we were before and isn't isn't that exactly what's happening today in all our businesses and either you go out of business or you have to evolve we're doing nothing other than what the victorian bakers did [Music] to counter the declining popularity of bread baker's attempted to woo customers with new premium varieties so if one scales one balls one rolls and i fold so we don't need one no we need to bowl them all up first the next day work begins on some vienna bread the most fashionable product of the time according to the modern baker confectioner and caterer so the one that we're making is this kaiser roll for vienna bread dough was enriched with milk butter and sometimes egg and then molded into eye-catching shapes these days we have a nifty little tool a hand tool you press down and it creates this shape here they're showing you how to make it by hand which seems a bit of an effort vienna breads were mostly morning rolls bakeries often supplied them to hotels they were also found on what the manual calls the breakfast tables of the well-to-do classes if we were selling these on to a higher class hotel or restaurant to actually give to their patrons they would be a bit confused as to why some are so big there isn't anything written in the book on scaling weight look at that and look at that look some people are bigger than others for me what's most interesting about this is we really do see the tradesmen having to kind of raise their game and you know we've got a middle class here that is swelling and swelling and swelling and they're aspirational they want to consume they want to be seen to be on the up what you tend to find more and more is you've got this sort of lower middle class who can't quite afford to employ a living servant they might have a child or a gay girl who comes in but they want to dress and they want to seem to be slightly higher up and they are and it's not about aping their betters it's all about wanting to compete with their own classes they're not competing with lady devonshire they're competing with mrs jones over the road bakers themselves had moved up the social scale since the mid-victorian period [Music] a baker who owned their own shop would now have been categorized as lower middle class and the salary for even the most junior hand 22 shillings a week would have been considered fairly comfortable probably the most popular shape of role as made in this country is the crescent or it is usually called the horseshoe to modernize this looks like a croissant but in 1900 british bakers still made the original austrian model using bread dough rather than flaky pastry [Music] continental cities like vienna and paris often set styles in food as well as fashion many of the people making our bread then had foreign origins too baking still had a reputation for being unpleasant manual work so most british people were reluctant to do it sounds familiar but one surprising difference about victorian immigration is where these new workers came from by the late 1880s it was estimated that around half of london's 4 000 master bakers were german there was a huge community of germans much of it centered here on charlotte street so much so that it was even known as carlotta strasser and around a third of the businesses here had german names according to the 1881 census germans formed the largest foreign-born minority in britain at the time their homeland was struggling economically and was politically oppressive too britain was the country they envied there was more than enough work and it was far more tolerant it was a land of opportunity with no immigration laws with open borders and with no need for passports on the downside like immigrants before and since the germans usually worked longer hours for lower pay and faced hostility from the british press nonetheless german names were a common sight on british high streets until the outbreak of the first world war [Music] give them a bit more space to get the other tray you want to get them in vienna breads were characterized not just by their rich dough but by their glaze one more isn't it right oven door coming open to create that they needed something which victorian britain now relied on in so many ways steam well steam in the oven now will help them jump and give a better color and crust to the outside and it's something we use today it's it's fantastic they've took it from the rest of victorian life you've got steam trains and you've got all the heavy machinery which is using water and they've actually realized it put it onto the ovens spread bakers we wouldn't ever really contemplate baking bread without steam and the customers must have noticed a difference yeah definitely and that's it we didn't have to worry about stoking extra nothing it's all there getting rid of this cert in the bottom of it it's all there science and industry were transforming every part of the baking process okay keep your fingers out guys and the biggest change of all was the use of machinery mind the doors electric mixers were still a novelty in 1900 but the national bakery school was already recommending every establishment should have one although the victorian age was defined by industrial progress baking had been slow to mechanize bread making machinery had been on sale since the 1850s but early models had to be operated by steam which was expensive or hand cranked which was exhausting as a result right to the end of the 19th century the vast majority of bakers stuck with manual bread making i'm sweating buckets it's dripping into the trough look at this but with the dawn of the 20th century baker's lives would be transformed forever [Music] but you can look at the action can't you see they've they basically just looked at what they were trying to do yeah yeah and gone well i know what we can do here we can just add two buddy great arms and and go for it but it must be nicer realizing that it's not got the sweat of you two guys in that must be a comforting thought or any of your toenails or my toenails that's right yeah yeah no it's good it's progress at the end of the victorian era though bakers was still fearful of what machines might do to their livelihoods a bakery which bought a mixer at this time cut labor costs in half think how scary it was for them because now the owner of the bakery can buy one of these and this won't die this doesn't complain and this can work 24 hours a day we've got a new machine that are putting bakers out of business we've got customer changing what they want to eat because they've got more money so pretty much not to change then why did john have a feel um yeah we'll turn it off now and the mixer was just the first sign of how much baking would mechanize in the 20th century i thought i could do better we'll let you do the next one bye yeah that's not daniel nelly [Music] another sign of technological progress in the 1900 bakery was the variety of loaf tins available these are cool flower pots british factories were mass producing thinly pressed molded metal at very affordable prices bakers hoped that novelty shaped tins would help stem falling bread sales what we've got to do is really really grease them up well we almost need to be frying the bread because otherwise they'll not come out we have another horseshoe yeah some bakers sold horseshoe loaves others favored the musket and the hexagonal pot was also on sale at the time the nearest thing i've ever seen remotely like this ship is panettone yeah i mean how can you get if you cut in a slice say how can you get equal portions for everybody the victorians also liked their cakes to come in an ambitious range of shapes i've never seen a cake tin like this before tin plated copper molds like these would once only have been found on the shelves of aristocratic kitchens even the bakery school manual admits that the savoy shape is sometimes too fancy to be practical a tin like this that resembles jelly mold literally would only be able to get jelly out very easily so i personally don't think that we are going to do very well with these cakes because i think it's going to be a right pain to get them out but we shall see wow it's got a lovely color shall we get it on the table then guys [Music] when victoria first came to the throne bakers didn't use loaf tins at all in the middle of her reign standard oblong tins became commonplace it was in the 1890s bakers discovered the retail value of novelty shapes a baker of the time writes how these tins led to a very ready sale tin technologies all of this stuff was kind of gadgetry to them really and it's something that they were embracing and i reckon that they must have been thinking right well we know how we make our dough how whacky can we get yeah it's a different weird now even factory owner john is skeptical about this particular application of new technology what we've got is robot eyes uniform it's not not right these days it's not what we're looking for we're looking to go the other way more natural more artisan looking more homely more countrified but in those days their thinking was different the great advantage of novelty tins for the victorian baker was that they could sell a standard weight of dough for a higher price this is all great this is fantastic because you've got a variety you know it's not just about that this this is all right i like that that's that's meat to veg but different shapes sizes textures if you are for business man you will know you have to follow the trend anything new you're willing to do and you charge a premium for it [Music] the first tins out of the oven contain harpreet's molded sponge cakes oh wow that has actually really picked up the shape of the mould fantastically i did not think that that would happen at all i thought i would have to literally scrape most of the batter out of there let's have a look at this guy i'm dumbfounded that is phenomenal you know this is an easier method than i would have employed in my kitchen now they clearly knew what they were doing and i actually clearly need to learn a thing or two from the victorians open the door then the cakes might be a triumph but can the curiously shaped loaves be anything other than kitsch wow look at that one they're coming out great absolutely fabulous [Music] i was really skeptical when i saw that tin and i was i thought what on earth is that but actually i could sell that beautiful rather special here come the sandwich boxes an era before mechanical bread slicing was invented the musket loaf guided your bread knife with its grooves the ridging is fantastic on those how thick to cut each slice look at the color and the crust on that i just love the shape it's really organic and it's kind of done its own thing but we've got those perfect four edges these are show pieces in your window aren't they yeah in a way come in i'm one of the best bakers around you don't want to go down the road you want to come to my way i would put that on the dinner table yeah and actually as practical bread goes you've got the slices running around yeah slice of good luck really in it i think that's amazing i like that a slice of good look by 1900 it was no longer enough for a baker to merely make their products they also had to display them now they were competing with other shops for consumers spend they had to dress their windows as elaborately as a clothing or department store so how big a strip do you want to do according to the national bakery school manual at the start of the 20th century it was quite the fashion to use velvets of different colours to produce a bright looking display there's nowhere to put any of this i actually think we should probably clear the window before we start take everything into the back and then get it all set up here i disagree well i don't just carry everything out all right put you back into it man the two johns quickly take a back seat you really want your shop window dressing by a factory block from barnsley i'll preach outside just shouting orders it's great not being able to hear her [Laughter] yeah she's happy right i think that's a job well done chaps look at that that ain't bad actually boys it's no more than just the bread it's more than just the wholesale it's now retail i mean we need to start dressing yeah we need to entice people in hello there what do you think of the shave nice that dog looks hungry doesn't he look because if you want some of our bread can i have this amazing horseshoe yes yeah like so much else in 1900 this new art of retail took bakers away from what had been their core activity for centuries making bread most bakers would be uh fairly unhappy because for them to have to come out the bakery to start pushing their own shops to people may have been uncomfortable bake the bread hand be nice yeah oh the most tempting products for the shop window would be colorful cakes with that in mind harpreet is making fondant this was a task that would only be tackled by someone with experience in confectionary it's time consuming painstaking and easy to get wrong we are at 235 now is the time for the glucose to go in [Music] once the industrially refined sugar solution has dissolved the resulting syrup needs to cool down again electric refrigeration technology wasn't invented until 1914 so the victorians used cooling materials marble and steel bars doesn't this look fantastic although she runs a successful business in the 21st century harpreet wouldn't have been able to do this in 1900 in the 1840s bakehouse even in the 1870s women wouldn't have been out of place by the time you get to the 1900s almost all confectioners were men because this was perceived as the most skillful task and a lot of women are increasingly pushed out to be the frivolous sweet thing that is selling the french fantasies at the front window within my business there is nothing that i cannot do and i've actually never been told that i can't do something i can't imagine how soul destroying it would be to be a woman in this age who would have a bright mind and abilities and just be yearning to actually show that all off you'd almost feel a bit like a caged bird once the sugar solution has cooled it needs to be creamed even in late victorian times some bakers bought factory-made fondant precisely to avoid this slow and laborious process by working it repeatedly you'd work air into it make it more malleable make it more pliable ah my good man john that looks hard work harpreet displays the kind of management initiative denied to women in 1900 i think i might need some of your brute force so i try with this thing here and gets john to do it for her i think girl power is wonderful up to a certain point and then you just need to find a man to do your hard work for you frank i think a part of girl power is actually knowing when to delegate knowing when to delegate yeah oh this is really tough i'll tell you what this is harder than kneading the dough by hand this gino i think the packet of fondant that you can get in the supermarket is looking much more appealing now [Music] it's coming to fondant now look at it we have made fondant oh look at that oh look he's a flower form oh thank you so much peruse they are petal have another one the fondant will be used to top the extravagant cakes late victorians loved so much but bakers did at least now offer a healthier choice when it came to bread the overwhelming consumer demand in the victorian period is for white bread but you do start to get people realizing that white breads definitely not as good for you as brown bread the problem and the reason that bakers were a bit sniffy about it is that brown bread in 1900 has a kind of reputation for being not particularly appetizing it is kind of ick victorian wholemeal wasn't as finely milled as the brown flower we now buy in supermarkets and it's oatmeal isn't it yeah it really is coarse isn't it that come and to make a product which these days we think of as healthy the victorians added some surprising ingredients two ounces of lard one ounce of sugar as well lard has just got such a distinctive flavor that isn't going to make a very good breakfast lunch and afternoon bread wholemeal bread was generally described by the victorians as invalid food the people that would have eaten this when the people who are you know of slightly iller health are we suggesting it might be people who are a little bummed up shall we say oh yeah in the bowel region yes so this is this is bread that will be enjoyed three times once in anticipation of buying it the other one in consumption and the other one in remembrance trust you lower the tone i mean we know that this isn't gonna make a decent sandwich bread it's a different product yeah you don't ever think you're going to get the same rice out a whole meal from this era we can deliver the health benefits that's easy but delivering the health benefits in something that somebody wants to come back and buy again and eat on a regular basis you've got to um just make it ever so slightly different the baker's own victorian wholemeal is ready for tasting [Music] genuinely i would put that in my shop tomorrow and it would sell really really well with our client base you're seeing where the whole keeping the good stuff in movement began people at last are kind of starting to show an interest in their actual health i suppose it's the stereotypical quinoa eating yoga doing yummy mummy brigade from today the equivalent of that in 1900 are the people buying this and i must be a quinoa eating yummy mummy because i like it i would buy it i do i would have read that recipe as a historian and i would have thought okay brown bread at this point in time was something that didn't taste great but tasting what you've produced in a victorian oven with victorian flower with victorian techniques this is a revelation and i could never have got that from the documentary sources alone fakers could now charge more for wholemeal than for white the opposite of what had been the case for most of history but the real money spinner wasn't health bread it was cake our preacher proof they look really good well done that's high price making cakes to the standards demanded by victorian customers required a whole new level of skill especially from bakers more used to bread what next boss four paneer genoise jam-coated sponge is dipped in a new invention of the 1880s desiccated coconut oh they look fantastic you want to try some the cake is then partially filled with buttercream and the basket's handles are made from a favorite victorian ingredient wow these look good yeah what is it it's kind of rhubarb like plant and it's been candied i mean you noticed that this is you know as far away from where we've just come from in the victorian era brute force and ignorance in some respects and now we're being very delicate and dainty [Music] as we already saw with the novelty loaf shapes the late victorians set no store on things looking natural the more eye-catching the better i am generally amazed because i thought life was in black and white absolutely and then this has come along i mean look at the colors it's enough to worry artisan baker duncan i would suspect that with their love of kind of ingenuity and productivity and everything all of the colorants used at the time would have been some kind of chemically based not natural kind of colorant it's true that earlier in the 19th century colour could come from some very dangerous substances chiefly lead for yellow coloring copper for blue and green and mercury for red talking of garish colours we have got this shocking thing fluoro beauty but it's all good a series of poisoning scandals had led victorians to introduce proper regulation of food colorings culminating in the food adulteration act of 1899 so at this point food dye shouldn't have killed you though looking at them might have made you a bit nauseous fancy fancy fancy the three different colors of rolled fondant on top of the masked genoise are covered with melted chocolate fondant so you need to pour this on all the way down actually what we've got here is very complicated cakes indulging they're coming up in the world aren't they they want pretty indulgent luxurious products and yes it takes the baker or confectioner a while to produce them which means that they're going to charge a fair penny for them keep although in 1900 harpreet wouldn't have been doing this work god you just can't get the staff nowadays can you the 21st century businesswoman can't help but take charge we this bossy with bread i don't think so i don't think the three of you waved your whis around eight days every single step of the way we did no you didn't i think today we saw just how hard cake decorators pastry chefs and confectioners actually have to work so whereas these boys have thought they're the real kind of brutish guys that work with bread and they need stuff with their hands they have actually had to make pretty little cakes today nice duncan is making the filling that will sandwich together some sponges it's a mix of cherries apricots and jam and in another blade the nation of victorians as people who didn't like to be amused decadent there's plenty of booze going into this is a far cry from the classic victoria sponge with just a layer of jam in there look at this this is an adult's cake for sure that is really strong despite harpreet's verdict duncan decides you can never have too much maraschino let's go now because we need to get this done to modernize that filling might seem like more than enough happy with that but then the recipe calls for sweet green icing don't leave this cake out in the rain it's finished with custom-made meringue biscuit twists we've got lung dusha cones filled with strawberry buttercream and vanilla buttercream because obviously there just wasn't enough on there you know it is culinary kitsch but at the same time i don't know about you but it does make me smile it's rather victorian bling isn't it it was called gatosuvrov for the 1900 customer a cosmopolitan name was part of the appeal for the middle classes in lake victoria and britain this is aspirational you kind of think i've got a bit of the aristocracy on my own table i mean for me it all looks very nice but it's all a bit pretentious you know i mean forgive me give me a pork pie the late victorian era is when afternoon tea took the form for which the british are still globally renowned [Music] so on their final day as victorian bakers the team are making a celebratory spread half pound of butter and lard mixed starting with one of the vital elements scones darling there's always debates isn't it yeah my philosophy is whoever's paying says it the right way i don't really care what they call it as long as they pay government your cement mixing if you were hosting a tea party in 1900 you'd probably call on your local baker to cater for it much as offices today might order in sandwiches for a lunchtime meeting [Music] for bakeries the sandwich was a way of boosting declining sales of bread an added value product they could charge for i brought along guidance from a book written by mr t herbert in 1890 which was dedicated to the subject of sandwiches now you might want to stop for a moment because herbert has some advice on the thickness of your slices okay he says here remember it should be as delicate in appearance as possible and not one of those things which should be named mouth distorters okay so the popular doorstep sandwich that we love today that's not what we're looking for and he actually goes on to stipulate what the thickness of your slices should be so let's have a look at yours john how are you doing herbert says a quarter of an inch and i'm sorry john that's not going to pass that's a that's a third of an inch what about mine i'm afraid that's even worse earlier in the victorian period sandwiches were more often than not filled with ham but by 1900 the number one filling was something else here we go what nice that's tongue that is tongue it is indeed tongue oh my god that looks hideous tongue was a particularly important ingredient for late victorian sandwiches it was incredibly popular can i touch it you can touch it you can skin it oh god it's hard that's disgusting i am not skinning that i think that's a job for one of the johns [Music] there we go i mean look at that perfect if you look at that now harpreet that's really quite a clean piece of meat isn't it [Music] in the 21st century a nose-to-tail approach to meat is mostly confined to trendy restaurants but for the victorians it was common sense thrift another popular feeling was bone marrow i mean this stuff isn't sexy but nasturtiums on the other hand i absolutely love flowers beautiful leaves edible this is another combination from herbert's 1890 sandwich guide victorians ate nasturtium leaves as often as we turn to rocket today can i peppery a peppery it's lovely flour you don't need a lot of it it's got a bit of heat to it bit that definitely has a kick yeah in those days tongue sandwich wasn't a euphemism for french kissing though the ingredient recommended to complement it was highly continental truffles you know we were so poor not long ago we couldn't even afford flour and now we're buying what an 80 pound truffle it's just ridiculous everything on the table was just you know shouting to me sort of high-end you know money and books of the time suggest far more exotic fillings from pheasant grouse and quail through to oyster eels and maid that's another type of fish not your servant the notion that you'd buy your sandwiches pre-made from the same shop who made your bread was a relatively late victorian development but one which bakers have profitably continued ever since can you imagine if it hadn't been the earl of sandwich that had sort of started it if it had been the earl of devonshire or something would have if it was a guy called derrick yeah we could be we could be eating dairy for lunch yeah [Music] it's not too bad afternoon tea is served to family and friends and crouch-end locals so we've got a neapolitan cake here we've got scones with clotted cream and jam the scones are absolutely delicious it's a chance for everyone to reflect on 63 years of victorian baking at every stage there were products that really surprised me and i'm shocked by how much i actually enjoyed having them so i think it's good to open your mind and to think about some of the fantastic flavors that have sadly got forgotten along the way you want to try some more cake yeah we got a yes he likes it they're just fantastic products and and they're really eye-catching and i can really see those entering onto the swift counter if they were good for them with a slight change maybe not so much sugar they'll be good today we have charted a journey really from the small from the local to the introduction of factory conditions and then sort of rampant consumerism as well and the pace of change the way in which as well so much that happens outside baking impacts on the food industry that is something that i'd never really fully appreciated until i'd seen our bakers watching in that first 1840s bakehouse pounding bread and moving to something where you can press a button and it happens for you behind the door it's a really graphic illustration of the way in which the victorian age impacted on everyone it's amazing but with progress came sacrifice of sometimes valuable traditions at the beginning of the victorian era we saw their close links that these kind of rural bakeries had you know you knew the farmer who grew the wheat and that that supplied the miller that then supplied the bakery whereas as we've kind of gone through the eras we've seen that relationship become more and more distant as time progressed they had to fight harder to find customers to keep up with other businesses with more development and with more competition comes the higher level of stress i've been a victorian baker i would have wanted to be an industrial baker you know the industrialization of bread production was what was responsible for an affordable price i've learned there's a lot of things that probably didn't happen as a result of baker's own choice a lot of what they've done is responding to demand at the end of the day they're trying to run a business and they're trying to make a living the one thing i take from the victorians is their ingenuity and thinking outside the box we think we're coming up with great new ideas and actual facts they've all been thought of before they were thinking of retail they were thinking a wholesale they were thinking supply and demand it's just it's a mirror image it's just that they were wearing more clothes i think we've all learnt something and i've certainly learnt a great deal i had such a great time using ingredients that would have been used back then wearing clothes that they would have worn back then there is nothing else that could have got you closer to being a victorian baker each of us has become that baker from the past and some ways bakery has changed massively and in other ways it hasn't changed a bit

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 214,342

Rating: 4.9419141 out of 5

Keywords: history documentaries, absolute history, world history, ridiculous history, quirky history

Id: N1s1K7ZKKzU

Length: 49min 46sec (2986 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021