n the Middle Ages it
was anything but general. Yeast, which, according to Pliny, was already
known to the Gauls, was reserved for pastry, and it was only at the end of
the sixteenth century that the bakers of Paris used it for bread.

At first the trades of miller and baker were carried on by the same person
(Figs. 74 and 75). The man who undertook the grinding of the grain had
ovens near his mill, which he let to his lord to bake bread, when he did
not confine his business to persons who sent him their corn to grind.

[Illustration: Fig. 75.--The Baker.--From an Engraving of the Sixteenth
Century, by J. Amman.]

At a later period public bakers established themselves, who not only baked
the loaves which were brought to them already kneaded, but also made bread
which they sold by weight; and this system was in existence until very
recently in the provinces.

Charlemagne, in his "Capitulaires" (statutes), fixed the number of bakers
in each city according to the population, and St. Louis relieved them, as
well as the millers, from taking their turn at the watch, so that they
might have no pretext for stopping or neglecting their work, which he
considered of public utility. Nevertheless bakers as a body never became
rich or powerful (Figs. 76 and 77). It is pretty generally believed that
the name of _boulanger_ (baker) originated from the fact that the shape
of the loaves made at one time was very like that of a round ball. But
loaves varied so much in form, quality, and consequently in name, that in
his "Dictionary of Obscure Words" the learned Du Cange specifies at least
twenty sorts made during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and amongst
them may be mentioned the court loaf, the pope's loaf, the knight's loaf,
the squire's loaf, the peer's loaf, the varlet's loaf, &c.

[Illustration: Fig. 76.--Banner of the Corporation of Bakers of Paris.]

[Illustration: Fig. 77.--Banner of the Corporation, of Bakers of Arras.]

The most celebrated bread was the white bread of Chailly or Chilly, a
village four leagues (ten miles) south of Paris, which necessarily
appeared at all the tables of the _elite_ of the fourteenth century. The
_pain mollet_, or soft bread made with milk and butter, although much in
use before this, only became fashionable on the arrival of Marie de
Medicis in France (1600), on account of this Tuscan princess finding it so
much to her taste that she would eat no other.

The ordinary market bread of P