Why Was Baking The Most Deadly Job In The Victorian Era? | Victorian Bakers | Absolute History
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
- Four 21st-century bakers bake their way through the era that gave us modern baking as we know it - the reign of Queen Victoria. Experts Alex Langlands and Annie Gray join them to tell the incredible story of our daily bread.
The bakers have left the rural bake house and the golden age of baking behind, this time it's the 1870s and they're moving into an urban bakery in the midst of the Industrial Revolution.
Their new bakery is totally authentic and it boasts two coal-fired ovens. At this time it is coal that fuels Britain's epic industrial expansion and bread that feeds its ever-expanding urban workforce. A growing middle class start demanding 'fancy breads' for breakfast and so the bakers must now bake through the night.
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If only they understood the ease and simplicity of no-knead bread (:
LMAO these people just cant help themselves can they? An indian woman frmo india is alongside white bakers to fulfill diversity quota whne literally all bakers in vict. england were white, by virtue of being the indigenous population.
Disgusting additives are still added to food today; greed... greed never changes.
Qr
“Doesn’t that cause brain damage?”
“Not immediately”
Victorian England in a nutshell
I just heard that line. Had to pause to go back to work and saw your comment...
Doesn’t that slowly cripple people
More than likely
America since forever
35:04
@@Wishfullilith
,
,,,
Damn this show tells so much about human nature !
They were all complaining when they were exhausted or making bread that could kill people locally, but they are all happy when they get the the cheap flour and sugar from america and immediately say that even in their modern actual bakery they do not mind using cheaper product from abroad then more expensive product from local makers as long as they can make better profit and they do not care about the consequence about the product today beign produced by underpaid workers, wrking in horrible conditions, sometimes even children, just like their ancestor bakers in the 19th century didn&t care that the reason the flour and sugar from the US was cheap was because it was made by slaves and directly a product of the slave trade. Slaves were taken from East Africa to the US then the same ships would go from the US to England with flour and sugar and then from England they would go to Africa with mass produced things from the industrial revolution and these would be sold in Africa and the ships would leave Africa for the US with their loads of Slaves on them, males females and children, and on the ship the males would be separated from the women so that the women could be available for the crew, along with the children.
And those bakers felt nothing about it when they got their cheap flour and sugar, just like Bakers today and other professions do not give an F about the fact that those cheap products come from modern forms of slavery and also the destruction of countless natural habitats and the extinction of the local fauna and flora all over the planet.
Yes we haven't changed at all.
Imagine living in a time where the average adult worked 18+ hours and think to yourself on the way home, "I can't wait to get home and eat some coal infused bread!"
And that's if one didn't die, or get robbed on the way back home
They generally didn't eat the bottom of the bread, most families who could would throw it out, but yeah coal infused bread is not good for you. Makes you grateful for supermarkets.
@@Amelia7o9 no makes you greatful for modernization and education. Even without a supermarket or civilization collapse people alive today know about the dangers of certain cooking fuels and sanitation and how to cook food in a clean enviroment. A simple stove we use today would have been voodoo magic to people back then as literally anything you want to cook can be cooked on it safely and without danger for the most part
@@Amelia7o9 I know right, it's crazy how far we advanced in just a few hundred years.
Nowadays you just gotta go for a nice stroll down the street to a supermarket which gives you easy access to a plethora of safe and delicious food and ingredients to make whatever you want.
Don't forgot the chalk and sweat.
man it feels like literaly every job in the victorian era was dangerous.
During the industrial revolution, white hot bolts were sledge hammered and riveted to hold steel plates together. While making ships, children had to crawl around in the hull holding metal to rivet the bolts from inside. Sometimes they missed, sometimes they broke, sometimes they got sealed inside the ship. Coal miners, asbestos removal, soldiers, tree trimmers... Most jobs MEN do are dangerous, even today. So much for privilege eh?
@@sicsempertyrannishonk7197 once again...the concept of what we're actually talking about with respect to privilege goes WHOOOSH...right over your head.
PEOPLE do a lot of dangerous jobs, back then and even today...it being solely in the domain of MEN has nothing to do it.
Not surprising this is your take given you have a playlist with "What's wrong with millennials?" in it.
Generational hate is stupid and a waste of time. GTFU already.
Bruh just living in general was dangerous in the Victorian era
I think our immune systems are a little fucked nowadays because of all that poison from earlier eras.
@@sicsempertyrannishonk7197 Mhn it's almost as if men put themself in those positions and dont even give women the chance
My great grandmother told me that some bakers in the capital where she was born, could keep your christmas roast or similar you got from the butcher hot when the ovens where cooling down(her family was busy and couldn't afford to be home and make it themselves, so they bought it almost completly done). It was cheap and the bakers earned a little extra on the side.
Yes, this was common particularly as people back then (as in some places now) didn't always have an oven. I have to say the best roast I have ever had was out of an old brick bakers oven.
In South Philly a few bakeries charge a small fee to cook your Thanksgivings or Christmas Turkey.
@@JohnThomas-lq5qp I am not from the States and have little knowledge of the demographics of Philadelphia. Is South Philly a working class area?
@@kesfitzgerald1084
yes it is; diverse immigrant population, with historically large Italian and Irish population.
@@petesmitt thank you 😊
Videos like this make you appreciate the little things that we take for granted. I can go to my pantry, and have good quality flour, and sugar. Without even a second thought. But back then, and even in some places now. That isn't possible.
Two of my great-uncles were bakers in Victorian times. I thought they’d made a step up to an easier life than being agricultural labourers like the rest of family, so this video was a real eye opener. One died at 54 and the other at 53, so they made it about ten years longer than the average. 😳
I'm a retired baker who worked at a small bakery for years and we worked all night. We made roughly 2500 loaves and 1500 dozen buns and 1000 dozen specialty buns. We also made 500 dozen cookies it wasn't too bad but when we only had a 2 man crew instead of a 3 man we worked 12 hours instead of 8
40:30 "to be this tired having done nothing valuable is just heartbreaking", sadly we are still up to this day
A newfound respect to early bakers in this era.
Reading & talking about it in school is NO WHERE NEAR the understanding this video gives.
thank you, thank you . . . THANK YOU.
Watching these documentaries it's safe to say that the Victorian era was just the era that it sucked to live in, no matter who you were and what class you belonged to. It's just for some it sucked more than for others, but in the end of the day I wouldn't wanna live in that era bo matter what.
If you were of the aristocrats
@@ultracapitalistutopia3550 even for being an aristocrat. The things they'd have to do for hygiene, the amount of times they'd get dressed in a day, the treatments and operations they'd have to go through in the case of an illness or injury... It was not a pretty world.
Sure, better to be an aristocrat than a coal miner, but compared to today I'd take a million times to just be in an average income family than being even an aristocrat during those times.
@@blame7121 or maybe be killed because someone wanted your position.
Unless you were Jack the Ripper XD
I’d say the Victorian era was better than any previous era, you gotta remember humans have struggled since the dawn of time
The passion and heart of these bakers for their craft and art elevated my respect for them to that of the saints. Baker Harpreet Borah’s despondency over the quality of their work was palpable. I think we witnessed what true professionalism and pride in one’s work actually looks like. If anyone in England is privileged to shop at their establishments, please let them know that there are many around the world who appreciate what they do.
I've never really liked bread, but this documentary has made me appreciate it a lot more for it's very existence. Bakers are amazing and i hope one can maybe provide me a bun or loaf that will change my opinion on them.
The difference between a freshly baked, homemade bread and a store-bought bread is like night and day. All store-bought breads have legal additives to "improve" them in some way or another.
homemade is made with usually just 5-6 ingredients, not to mention it's fresh. It's soooo good.... I like round loaves because they have a nice, thick, kinda chewy crust.
Absolutely LOVE to see the pride these bakers have! Sheer joy in their work is infectious!
That photo is a time machine. People in the future will find it and have no idea when it was actually taken. 😂
Absolutely eye opening reality shows us how much worse life could be and was and yet how wonderfully good we have it now… I needed that reminder
One line of of my ancestors owned a substantial flour mill in Silesia from about the mid-1800s and made a tidy fortune off it. Milling was big business, probably in no small part because of all the stuff you were allowed to add to the flour.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video. Living History is so important. We just don’t understand where we’ve come from if we can’t directly see or participate in it. I’ve been a bread baker for 8 years. I worked at an Artisan bakery. Many things were done by hand. I’ve mixed a lot of dough by hand probably rolled a million burger buns by hand.
I knew flour was cut in America with bone meal and corn and root vegetables. That’s insane that they cut the flour with Allum and Chalk in Britain. I couldn’t make bread like that. I couldn’t live with myself. Still have mad respect for bakers back then, they kept the world alive. I tried everyday to at least mentally note I was taking part in one of the world’s oldest and most important jobs.
I love the commercial on toenail fungus that followed the Baker using this feet. 🤣
Astonishing the amount of work has gone into this kind of work back then. Thank you for illuminating that. 😌
I love how the Victorians were such prudes, yet the fashion was CLEAVAGE ON PARADE
I'm craving bread now
Same, I'm making fresh potato bread because of this video, lol.
Me too! Beer bread is my preference, no kneading or proving required.
Hahahahaha me too
Not after John had his feet on the dough. :(
Mmmmm a nice brioche
13:43 "i actually feel worst having stopped and then lay down"
Me every single time after lunch break 😂😂😂
25:48 I'm so glad the other fellow speaking ran with this joke setup, because my brain went to the exact same song lol! Here I am, stuck in the kneading with you ...
Wow, I always thought that the idea of putting sawdust in bread was insane, but compared to chalk and alum, I feel like I would rather eat sawdust.
You ever eat Tums? Chalk is not bad for you. It is a necessary nutrient (calcium carbonate). If you live in the UK you have eaten bread with chalk in it. Since 1998, most breads are required by law to be fortified with calcium carbonate (chalk).
Like my Father would say 'What won't fatter will fill' and my Grandfather would say the
same and he was born in the middle of the Victorian era.
When they were mixing the chalky dough, and he said "welcome to the future". Its just sad how this really is happening today with adulterated food with even harsher chemicals
Now you just have to worry about Paul and Prue calling your shortbread “Stodgy.”
Coming from a broad variety, high quality bread producing country (Austria) I was always shocked what kind of bread or rather toast people eat in the UK, now with this historical explanation I understand we were late in the industrialization process and our bakers were revered and in the countryside many made their own bread, still we as customers demand high quality bread 😊
My husband and brother both work in the oil field (actually natural gas these days) and they work like this in 100+f during the summers. I dont know how they do it. I can barely walk to the mailbox without sweating. Hearing all the regulations they have in the UK opposed to the US really makes me feel bad for the workers here.
Try hitting the gym if walking to the mailbox gets you so tired
Lesson: if something is too cheap, get away from it
I like how they sit around to enjoy some of that feet kneaded bread XD
What's the problem? You bake bread, problem solved.
Top cuisine in the Victorian Era: Heinz Baked Beans on home-sliced, toasted bread.
it's truelly shocking what conditions people lived in during the victorian era. A lot of people think its all pretty and fun because of how movies and tv shows portray the era but in reality a lot of people lived in slum like conditions where your whole enviroment was slowly killing you
I'm still amazed that humans made it through that era; it seems like life was garbage for most people.
iniquity - True, but then again, at least they weren’t exposed to ‘Kardashians’ marathons on TV...
I think the extraction of silver was more deadly considering they boiled cyanide and breathed that in.
Verry good documentary
What people don't understand is that on the old times weather was way different. People were still wearing jackets during summer. It was much colder much different feeling of working. Even though it was a hard work we can't compete those times to nowadays.
Yeastless bread also has small benefits that your stomach won't get upset so easily and your farts (or feces) won't smell so bad.
I love to bake and bake almost every day. I make sourdough bread, bread bowls, cinnamon rolls etc.
I just wonder why most people especially the poor didn't make bread at home. I have made bread on the gas grill and a campfire. I did wrap foil around, but I am sure they could have carved a piece of wood for a lid to cover and let bake. I know I would try and figure out a way.
There were a multitude of reasons why the poor could not bake bread at home, especially in the cities. They earned extremely low incomes to start with and didn't have easy access to the raw ingredients needed to bake bread. The bakeries bought the ingredients in bulk which made it more affordable for them on a commercial scale. Most people also did not have ovens or equipment needed to bake bread. Then there is the time it would take and these people (especially the poor) were usually working 14-16 hour days so when they finally got home they only had time for sleep then it was back to work again. So it was easier and more economical for them to buy the loaf of bread necessary for that day's food. However in some more rural areas people did bake their own breads and were more self-sufficient. There's a channel called Townsends which shows some of the old techniques rural farmers used to bake their own bread :)
I often bake pan flatbread and yes, it is cheap and convenient these days; I will just pop down to my local supermarket and bye whole grain rye flour and all done within one hour, then mix it with some water and a pinch of baking powder, role the dough into buns and flatten them, and lastly bake them on an oil free pan a minute or so on each side (I usually make six at a time). But the Victorians did not have local supermarkets where you could buy two kilos of flour, instead you had to buy it from a miller who lived out of town and only in large and heavy sacks. futhermore it takes me more than half an hour in whole to bake six pieces of flatbread, now imagine baking that everyday for a family of four or more.
Let's not forget that, today, most processed food products have additives that are not always nutritious, either. Almost every other year there's one story or another about some product using some type of additive that is actually dangerous. It hasn't stopped. The producers (I won't call them bakers) have just become more canny about hiding these things. It's still best to make as much food at home, fresh, as you can.
For those wondering 20 stone equals 20 rocks.
Big rocks? Or small rocks? 🤔
😂
Working in a huge, very very modern bakery where lots of things is done with highly advanced machines, this is horrible. Not only is the pay, but all of the work they have to do... and I thought working in a bakery nowadays is exhausting, pushing around the carts full of dough and taking care of the machinery
Imagine what they would think if someone gave them a donut.
Always remember that every workplace safety regulation is there for a reason and was almost always written in blood.
Just remember that a lot of those regulations have nothing to do with safety. But was lobbied by very large companies to keep out smaller competition.
@@timesthree5757 capitalism: profits over people .
@@laurenwalker1048 you do realize that because of capitalism our poor is richer than most of the world.
I think the words yer looking for is crony capitalism.
@@laurenwalker1048 I'm all for capitalism not crony capitalism.
@@timesthree5757 nope, capitalism. I mean unfettered late-stage capitalism, which is where we are.
I love how this is simultaneously a food history documentary and a labor history documentary. We need more cross disciplinary documentaries like these. It really helps people understand how intertwined history is.
Hear,hear.
It's also medical history.
Right. And I think understanding how everything is interconnected also makes you pay deeper attention to all that’s happening TODAY. I’m with you, love documentaries like this
And a "professionals loosing their minds" video
specially focused on labor + something else
I was a professional baker for about 20 years. I started working at age 13 in my Mom's bakery. Even with all of the modern bakery equipment we have now, it is still incredibly demanding, physical work. Even at 13 years old, I was coming into the bakery at 5am, when my Mom has been working since 2am. I went to culinary school and did an apprenticeship in baking and pastry, which was incredibly difficult to get through. When I was working in bakeries, my shifts often started between 9-10pm and I worked until 7-8am, 5 days a week. For many years, I had a second part time job making pastry for a small tea shop, I would do that 3 days a week from 8:30am-12:00pm after working all night. It took years to get to a point of making a pretty good wage that allowed me to buy a house, but even then, it was never a high paying job. No one does this work to make really good money; we do it because we love it. However, it does cost us healthwise. After 12 years or so working in the industry, I developed a flour allergy from constantly breathing in raw flour. At the 20 year mark, I had asthma symtpoms and my feet were damn near shot from daily work on concrete floors. I retired from baking at age 42 when COVID hit. I lost all of my work, and it forced me to reevaluate my physical state, and I realized how incredibly exhausted I was. I went into a whole new career in 2020.
This video has made me think of the bakers at grocery stores in my area.
Mind if I ask what’s the new career? I admire career changers later in life
My mother worked in the bakery department in Safeway. She certainly said it was demanding.
That sounds like my job. I quit after 17 years because it was just getting to much for me and I already had somehealth issues. I went from working with food to one on one sitting an 95 year old with dementia. It is rough some days but so much easier and I get to sit down when I need to where I couldn't at my last job. Even being in a lot of pain, my supervisor wouldn't let me sit.
@@acmhfmggru what about plumber?
It's such a joy to witness the elation on their faces, as they finally get to abandon the toxic ingredients in favor of actual proper flour, butter, sugar and yeast. The pride and passion for their craft is downright touching.
My Great grandfather died of what was called 'flour on the lung'. He had brought his extended family to Australia, and to get away from baking in London. Sadly he only lived for four years, and died in 1934. So, not just a problem of the Victorian period. He was from three generations of bakers. My son knew nothing of this, and he is, you guessed it, a baker!
If he was from a family of bakers, he probably started working in the kitchen when he was pretty young, so he probably was baking bread in the Victorian era (pre 1901).
I worked in an industrial bakery for a few years. A friend if mine had pneumonia all the time and the doctors said it was from flour dust
Woah baking must really be in your bloodline
I had a job conducting research in a medical school. At that time state institutions were not subject to federal OSHA regulations. I found that one of the electron microscopes we were using was leaking 100 times the allowable limit of x-rays.
I was only subject to that for about a year and a half. But a woman who worked on that microscope 10 hours a week for 15 years develop breast cancer in both breasts. She had a different type of cancer in each breast.
Her doctors kept asking if she’d had radiation exposure. She said no because she didn’t know the microscope was leaking.
Then I came along and found the leak. And her fatal breast cancer was explained, but unfortunately she died.
Please don’t listen to somebody that says Small businesses will be hurt by safer environment or regulations.
No one should make money by causing harm to another.
@@scothammond5736 as someone who had pneumonia once upon a time let me say what my doctor told me is that this unfortunately creates scarring a permanent scar that never goes away.
This also unfortunately makes your easily sustainable to getting sick easily and causing a life time issue with breathing. Like myself I love baking and cooking but sadly I have to use a mask these days because when I don’t I end up inhaling the fumes or the stuff from baking that leads me to wheezing heavily and breathing hard. May your great grandfather Rest In Peace🤗
The relief on his face when he realized that his family would have been baking during the later portion, without the aduluterants, you could feel his pride returning.
"in many places they were actually locked into their bake houses by the owners"
Jeff Bezos: write that down
😂
😭😭😭😅
Oof this too real after the tornadoes
employers still try to pull that. when I was a child in North Carolina I lived near a chicken processing plant that caught fire. there was loss of life because the owners chained the doors shut during the work shift
Still goes on today. Not just him, but do you really think all the jobs shipped overseas bc it's cheaper have better conditions?
I love how the bakers are so protective of their craft, and that they find it heartbreaking that people did this shows their real empathy.
If you've ever started your own yeast culture and baked from start to finish, you sort of get invested in the whole process since baking is pretty technical and you realize real quick you can lose a lot of time, effort, and ingredients, if you screw up in any part of the process before you put that thing in the oven, you'll get some sub-par end product or something you didn't really want.
So you're going to put a lot of dedication to getting it right, you grow to appreciate what goes into baking. Of course anyone can just make simple bannock, but to get a lovely loaf with good crumb AND consistently pump that out in many loafs over and over again? That takes a lot of effort.
Yeah to pop all those adulterants in there is heartbreaking to those who make their best product for friends and family. The amount of labor and little pay would have you looking for a new job or turning to crime.
They are true crafts people. There is a dedication among people who feed other people to give them their very best and using shitty ingredients would crush many of them.
Seriously people now a days literally get injured in the kitchen when baking from muscle strains to poor posture and arthritis, etc. and that’s with all the modern machines and technology, imagine how labour intensive it was back then!
To think people complain about the shit in our modern food; all our modern food additives and preservatives(E numbers for across the pond folks) are child's play compared to the shit used back then.
The other day I was baking some cupcakes to bring to a casual party with some friends. However, by the time I got to the frosting, I remembered I didn't have my electric mixer with me (I lent it to my mom, and I hadn't gotten it back yet). I didn't have time to go get it, so I whipped the frosting by hand. Took me around half an hour of nonstop whipping. After I finished, and my arm was half dead, I realized why bakers in old movies are always buff, thick, and absolute units.
What ingredients did you use? It should only take about 10 minutes for a rich thick creme...
@@runed0s86 They weren't making thick creme like you'd glop onto scones or something, that's not even a common thing in many places (most of the USA doesn't use it). They were describing making frosting (doesn't say what kind, could have been a whipped cream frosting but might have been cream cheese or buttercream etc), which is a whole other story, you have to whip it so much that it's almost like making meringue.
@@ItsAsparageeseI’m a commercial baker and I can confirm that buttercream when done correctly does have a very light, fluffy, meringue like appearance, and it would be a nightmare to have to aerate and whip it by hand
I was very happy for the bakers when they got better ingredients and were geeking out over their love of bread. You can obviously tell just how much they love their craft.
@CaraCara Well pastries are her speciality as the others are more on the normal loafing business.
I'd like to boss that Alex boy around 😉
Happy ? I was disgusted by it.
Damn this show tells so much about human nature !
They were all complaining when they were exhausted or making bread that could kill people locally, but they are all happy when they get the the cheap flour and sugar from america and immediately say that even in their modern actual bakery they do not mind using cheaper product from abroad then more expensive product from local makers as long as they can make better profit and they do not care about the consequence about the product today beign produced by underpaid workers, wrking in horrible conditions, sometimes even children, just like their ancestor bakers in the 19th century didn&t care that the reason the flour and sugar from the US was cheap was because it was made by slaves and directly a product of the slave trade. Slaves were taken from East Africa to the US then the same ships would go from the US to England with flour and sugar and then from England they would go to Africa with mass produced things from the industrial revolution and these would be sold in Africa and the ships would leave Africa for the US with their loads of Slaves on them, males females and children, and on the ship the males would be separated from the women so that the women could be available for the crew, along with the children.
And those bakers felt nothing about it when they got their cheap flour and sugar, just like Bakers today and other professions do not give an F about the fact that those cheap products come from modern forms of slavery and also the destruction of countless natural habitats and the extinction of the local fauna and flora all over the planet.
Yes we haven't changed at all.
I kept waiting for them to point out that the *reason* sugar was so cheap was not because of positive reasons, and then it never happened...
@@Ebbagull because that is not the aim of this documentary
This series is amazing... the perfect mix between a history documentary and a reality show of people experiencing their own profession in a different way. I also really appreciate the passion they have for their profession
but girls hated this series n think it's boring n nerdy tho
@@jake9854？
“ to be this tired and produce nothing valuable” most powerful quote for me
as an amateur cook, completely agreed-
ive only had a meal outright dud a few times, but....
bruh same
When you've never eaten unadultered bread, smelly or chalky bread is just normal. Several generations grew up getting not enough nutrition and possibly more severe health issues without ever knowing what was going on. That is scary, even today.
Too right!
Corn syrup is todays version
IM SO HAPPY NOT BEING BORN BACK THEN.
@@1320crusier Sadly I am more worried about all of the shit veggie oils.
@@vagabondwastrel2361 I mean, palm oil isn't nearly as bad as chalk, its diabetes properties don't hit you within a month, you can avoid most of them by avoiding fried food too, bread on the other hand is staple food
My father and grandfather were bakers. My grandfather was from Scotland and moved to the states in the 1920's. My dad worked in his bakery in the 30's and early 40's before he became a baker during the war. My dad developed a reaction to all the flour and was forced to leave baking in his mid-fifties. It was a tough way to make a living with terrible hours...never heard him complain. I admire what they both did. Not for me.
Also, don't forget tobacco
I’m still amazed how well documented Britain’s history is
@@moniquem783 here in the US, instead of teaching history, many citizens want to destroy it.
most of the history in my country, colonizers know more that it's people.
To be fair, they were colonisers and have never been colonised meaning, no reigning foreign government that has the urge to destroy the indigenous culture and history
@Cara you're comparing apples to oranges when they have a longer history than we do - of course there's less to document about the USA with its age only being 243. And furthermore, a true scholar of history would see just how All countries gloss over their darker days to glorify only the beautiful history. A major example being Japan and Korea and how the former refuses to acknowledge the damages they inflicted over the past century alone, and my girlfriend who lived in Russia informing how their curricula now rewrites historical scenarios rather than just omitting the gritty parts. It's egregious to assume that its only America that suffers from divisive interest in the true history of both their own culture and the world.
@@moniquem783 I know exactly what you are saying. Compared to Britain, Australia and New Zealand (I'm your kiwi cousin) are a lot younger so I think Britain is similar as our early relatives.
The really sad fact about this is not that people endured these horrible conditions, but because it was still a better life than many had at the time. Just look up Victorian Crawlers to see how low it really got. Watching documentaries like these gives me thanks for all I have today.
That was a depressing read.
@@Neuromancer23 Those times were depressing.
@@jessh4016 right and I'm sure you "meet" lots of them while you walk past them disgusted.
@@hughrealman50 I have the image of a person stalking homeless people as they beg on the street, then picking through their pockets to count the change.
Is that what they’re saying they do, if they say a thing like that with such confidence?
@@jessh4016 200$ is too much but yeah, many beggars are making quite a lot of money a day, certainly more than I have for living on a daily basis
I watched this from the comfort of my bed with savings in the bank and a job to go to that, done correctly, doesn't endanger my health. I felt a bit weepy at times, the hard lives these people endured day after day, only to pass before their time.
Thanks for this eye-opening revelation into those that came before us.
L
I've never been more grateful for my kitchenaid mixer than now.
I'm too broke to buy a kitchenaid so all my bread is by hand 😂 but even then, working out of a trough just sounds horrid
I've never been more grateful to have been born in 2001 and not 1856
Kitchenaids are amazing! They even sell giant ones with guards for kitchens!
A 30 liter commercial stand mixer sells for about $5000 and would do all of that trough work easily.
@@totoroben not exactly catered towards the average consumer.
*Adding alum to dough*
"Doesn't that cause brain damage"
"Not immediately"
"Oh ok"
*Later on: takes a massive bite of the alum bread*
I think they only ate the chalk one
@@jeremyscungio16 I'd hope so.
@@jeremyscungio16 You literally watched them eat the alum bread and discuss how disgusting it was...
@@Fitz1993 you believe everything you see on a show? It could have been just normal bread for all we know. It isnt real life. I wish people wouldnt over use “literally”
@@Unkn0wn1133 Yeah ok Aristotle... That's a really fucking stupid way of thinking when you're watching some innocent show about baking.
As a fellow professional baker, I really feel their disgust of adding chalk. That would be outrageous if done these days. This is why we have food authority and regulations.
People moan about bureaucracy, but in food industry this is exact reason why they exist. There are always people who cut corners and compromise quality for profit. ALWAYS. And if you let them, they will take advantage of loopholes.
They just replaced chalk with calcium propionate, don't pretend the regulations had anything to do with it besides making jobs for state dogs.
@@foetusdeletus6313 Ok there there. Here is your aluminium foil, now go play with other nut cases
@@saunajaakko699 5 shekels have been deposited into your account for defending uncle sam and Zion, good job, pup.
You say this; however, the addition of chalk was likely a good thing for the average Victorian with a subpar diet. Chalk (calcium carbonate) is a necessary nutrient... It's good for you in moderation and not bad at all.
@@saunajaakko699 That man isn't a conspiracy theorist. Loaves baked in the UK today are REQUIRED to be made from fortified flour... Fortified flour is going to contain added iron, thiamin, nicotinamide and calcium carbonate (CHALK). Chalk is a necessary nutrient. SOURCE: The Bread and Flour Regulations 1998
Every time I learn more about Victorian English cities it sounds like one of the most horrible, inhumane societies I could imagine. How anybody survived boggles the mind
G'day,
Yeah...
Funny, that.
The Tribes which had overpopulated their Ancestral Homelands, huddled in Industrial Slums...; they
ONLY
Colon-ised and
STOLE the resources of
EVERY other Tribe on the
Planet - whose
Ancestors had done a
BETTER Job of
Conserving their
Ecology...;
The
EuroPeons
ONLY
Colon-ised and
Trashed the
World -
To bring
The
"Benefits of
Christian Civilisation and
World's Best Practice
To the
Ignorant benighted
Heathen
Savage
Barbarians -
Who clearly did not
Deserve their traditional ancestral Homelands, or Resources - because they don't know how to
Man-Age their Country,
In order to
Maximise
PROFITABILITY
While satisfying
Europeon Market
DEMANDS...
Who'd've thunk they came from a place which raised them all to be
Selfish
Turds..
For
CENTURIES...?
Who knew ?
Such is life,
Have a good one...
Stay safe.
;-p
Ciao !
Many kids… sooo many kids, like people were just pumping them out
Just wait until you hear about the Romans
@shiftmym9079 the cool thing about birth control is that it made child abuse less profitable and encourages innovation, since there is now more money facing fewer child laborers. Basic economics.
the architecture was the only good thing but all the bad victorian architecture was demolished so who knew
I was born in Bradford UK in 64. Obviously I don’t remember my first few homes their, but at the age 3 I lived in one of the back to back houses , a one up, one down house. Mum, dad, and seven kids. Toilets outside, shared tin bath.. lol. The joys of an Irish immigrant child.. lol. And before us polish, after us Pakistani.
Treacle is also high in iron, potassium, manganese, calcium, and other minerals that would have been difficult for them to come by. They might not have known it, but treacle was a smart choice.
Treacle has become very expensive and that's if you can find it in the regular shops.
molasses was also really popular to put into the bread itself instead of sugar (it was cheaper) which has a ton of nutrients, and is super high in calories. It's kinda like the indigenous mesoamericans putting ashes into their corn (which nixtimalized it) and not realizing that was allowing them to absorb vital nutrients
the chalk would even have been a high source of calcium, but the other adulterants...
Funny how if they had been willing to eat whole wheat instead of white bread, it would have been cheaper and more nutritious.
@@miss.guidedghosts7858 They actually were aware of it. South American indigenous have some of the most knowledgeable practice in this regard. Modern perspectives in regards to health are much less so.
@@TheRealSamPreece oh deadass? that's cool!
I've been a baker for almost 20 years now. I've made bread and croissant dough in 200-250 lb batches before, but of course with huge mixers. I remember wondering (and dreading) what I'd have to do if the power went out or the mixer broke down. I pretty much promised myself that if it came down to my boss telling me to mix it by hand, I'd quit on the spot. Glad I never had to do that after seeing this lol
Lol- my boss had flood lights installed for when the power in our bakery goes out ! 😭 we have huge antique gas ovens with stones so we just keep right on baking 😭😭 we luv capitalism
@@jo-eo9ld The glory of capitalism is that if someone is working their staff to death or in dreadful conditions, eventually no one will want to work there and the problem self-corrects. Either they do better or go out of business. In the end it's completely voluntary.
@@wingy200 There's the invisible hand at work. One problem, if labour is unskilled enough and work is in high enough demand, you can get away with those conditions. Who cares if everyone working there quits at once, theres a group of employment ravenous soon-to-be bakers waiting at the door
@@CaptainShenanigans42 I never had guaranteed automation at any job Ive ever had, if the power goes out you do it manually, thats common sense not a reason to destroy a company wtf is wrong with people so lazy and quick to turn on anyone providing a job!
Has no bakery owner ever heard of a backup generator? This is 2022 FFS!
There should be a holiday dedicated to bakers. Food is sacred and anyone willing to break their back so you can start your day just right deserves the highest respect
I really appreciate bakers and farmers in the cheese industry for fueling my diet.
There is one, May 16th, in honor of St. Honoré, patron saint of bakers - and inspiration for the delicious eponymous cake.
I think everyone working a job is important we don't appreciate just how important every job , the working class makes the world go around and without us society would fall apart .. Respect to the working classes always .. we all play important roles in society..
@@annaverano5843 The US and Canada have labor/labour day
@@Moxinea Labor day sucks because the people doing most of the grueling labor (food service, gas stations, grocery stores) don't even close on labor day so the middle class can still have modern conveniences on their day off.
I never thought I would watch an hour on bread. It was fascinating, and I got completely sucked in.
Yeah, I thought the same when I looked at the length. Yeah I have 52 minutes for bread.
On the same boat. But watched all of it and want more.
@@GinsuSher same
Have you seen the BBC's various Farm series yet? Alex Langlands did several of them, and they're equally as engaging and interesting. There was a medieval castle series, a Tudor Monastery Farm series, a Stuart era farm called Tales from the Green Valley, they also did Edwardian, Victorian, and WW2 farms.
Agreed, i was so engrossed That it wasn't until the end when the baker was stacking the rectangular loaves on the table that i remembered that i had also worked in a bakery at a Jewel/Osco for 6 months stacking loaves on trays then loading them into freezers. Cold, lonely, fast paced whip at your back work. Guess it was a repressed memory.
20+ years ago, I was a history grad student and took a number of "social history" courses. These courses would cover topics like this but reading about 19th century Victorian bakers doesn't hit home as powerfully as watching history visually demonstrated as in this vid. Seeing the bakers in this video sweat and suffer while working under 19th century conditions creates much more empathy than just reading words in a book ever could.
That’s your subjective opinion why are you acting as if it’s fact
@@Shoegaze- Because they're stating their own experiences, which are a fact for them. The silly cat in your pfp would be ashamed of your rudeness
@@KyzenEX most intelligent white woman
I've been working at a bakery for a little more than two months. We have all the standart equipment of a modern, middle sized bakery: two 40kg electric dough mixers, two smaller 5-15 lt mixers for more liquid, cake-like batter mixers, a machine that devides dough and rolls it into buns, it can proccess up to 6kg of dough at a time, a molder for long buns.
My first three weeks were hell. Absolutelly hell. My feet hurt, my back was screaming, my hands were sore and inflamed. It ended in tears, with me crying to my boss telling her that I just can't, I'm in so much pain. She sent me home to rest for a longer weekend.
I am way better now, got into shape. I litterally lost 8kg on this job. I AM RIPPED. The best workout of my life. And I've been working in physical jobs since I was 12.
The working conditions in this bakery scares me.
What’s it like being a weak girl
can relate, men still get disappointed when I say I don't bake bread but pastries. I'm literally so fragile 😔. but I do help sometimes if they need some help on busy days
I believe you, a lot of carrying heavy equipment and pastry trays … constant hand workout from kneading and shit… standing for 8+ hours daily..
What a surprise the average worker was shitfaced from morning till evening.... 😅
@@Patrick3183 calm down babe, we all know you're weaker 🤣🤣
Man it's gonna be wild when in 100 years my grandkids think the environment I worked in was horrible. Meanwhile I'm like "this is the best job I've ever had."
I've worked in a bakery and I can tell you, the passion and pride that goes into the product is real! I was relieved for the bakers when they finally got their hands on normal flour again!
I shed a tear watching the dude coming to terms with the choices his ancestors likely made.
Me too! I was so happy for them…and suddenly inordinantly proud of American wheat and it’s naturally high gluten content!
I used to make pizza from scratch and i would have to kneed for 15 minutes and it was horrible and hard, it was a work out. I cant even imagine doing this
I've been making pizza weeky and all of my own bread since the start the pandemic. There is a learning curve and it's quicker than it was in the beginning. But here's the thing, it's still a long process and I am using a stand mixer and other modern tools. This must have been hell for these baker's
@@christines3638 have you got some good tips? my dough always turns out terribly
@@becky-kn6vc add enough flour to your dough and make sure to knead until the dough is soft, don’t stop when it’s still rough, you really want to develop the gluten. You don’t want your dough to be stick either, by the end of kneading it it shouldn’t be sticky and shouldn’t be rough either, just a round perfect ball.
If it’s still rough you still need to knead and if it’s still sticky you need more flour. Make sure your yeast is alive before you start and maybe try to follow a recipe.
Allow time for proofing, make sure your dough doubles in size before baking.
Make sure to add enough salt and/or sugar (or else it will not have flavor) and that is why I recommend a recipe to follow.
Bread isn’t hard. Good luck ✌️
@@becky-kn6vc I haven't tried bread but for pizza I've found if you can leave the dough in the fridge for several days you can get away with less kneading.
@@dianalove539 thank you so much i will try some of these tips next time i attempt to make bread :D
As an avid baker (was making hotcross buns whilst watching this) I found this episode exceptionally awe inspiring. I now have a new respect for bakers of old & 'our daily bread'.
hot cross buns!!! yes!!!!
A friend of mine here in the USA has severe COPD from working in the bakery of a well known commercial cookie factory. She worked there in the 70s 80s 90s and was never given a mask to wear and never warned of the consequences of breathing in flour dust. This manufacturer should be held accountable but she is so sick, she is too tired to fight a corporation. Bakers beware, wear a respirator
Please help her fight them.
I recall growing up there was talk that people before the 20th century had short lives. However, I found while working my genealogy that people in the pre-industrial period, if they survived childhood, would often live well into their 80s. It was the generations living during the industrial revolution who died in their 40's, 50's, and 60's.
So fudge numbers to get desired numbers? So let's not count people that die of cancer that way we can say people live to their 90s
@@diegoflores9237 Go pick a fight somewhere else troll.
Very interesting, thank you
I'm not sure which is worse, kneading with their feet, or rivers of sweat.
Read up on the number of bug parts and rat hairs that are legally allowed in chocolate
@@jakehuffman4041 That's true of all canned and packaged food, also. But I don't read it because I'd rather not know. I mean, I make bread at home by hand, so I know there's dead skin and hair from my hands in there, but I like to think whatever I buy from a bakery was kneaded in a Hobart.
Well sweat I guess. It is salty, but it probably has other stuff too. Feet could be properly washed first and then it wouldn't really be much worse than using your hands.
it's OK anyway. Bread undergones high-temperature processing, so all foreign and pathological constituents are sure to be killed. You'd better think of your favourite restaurant's cook preparing barehanded a veg salad you're eating raw
I used to work with a baker who would blow his nose into his hands and then work with the dough..... He said that it wasn't a problem as it would all be sterilised when baked....I would hope most bakers would be more hygienic than that though!
I actually started to tear up by 26:00 because you'll see how they're so miserable. It hits different when Duncan/John (the dude who has a great great Aunt who established their now-5th generation bakery) looks so crushed at the thought of how his ancestors have to do this thankless task and even cut corners in a brutal era.
Don't look up how coca cola is made, it will make you drown in salty eye liquid.
Oh my God, me too. You can suddenly feel the restoration of dignity later when they use wheat flour,
@@imdhepchannel7153 finally! Someone who could relate to me!
@@patmonte8426 actual cringe
@@LolLol-yn4gw it's not like yours is any less cringe with someone named lol lol
Literally just got home from my job (at a bakery lol) and was feeling sorry for myself that I have to lift 25-50 lbs of frosting, dough, etc, for 7 hours straight...
Suddenly feeling like maybe that's not so bad after all, haha. (Still hard but wowee it sure could be worse. So glad I'm not a victorian)
No trolleys and lifting equipment?
@@angelaalbury986 I very much doubt he has to do it constantly for 7 hours; I do parcel delivery with parcels in that same weight range but it's intermittent, so not onerous at all.
thank you
Yall need to invest in a lifting table dolly. U can dump whatever at near ground level wheel it to another work station and by miracle of the screw u can lift 500lbs to about 6' high. They sell shity ones at hazard fraught.
I lift pavers between that weight all day and come home feeling good about myself that I can endure some hard work
When you consider that at the time that bread was being adulterated, milk in cities was also being adulterated. Cows in the city dairies were fed the mash from beer-making, often almost exclusively, and milk was both watered down (often with not the cleanest water) but had plaster mixed in to whiten it and make it look less watered-down.
"The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair.
Sounds, “delicious.”
@@lavinialadlass9432 I know, right?
K... glad I get to buy cheap modern bread. People who bitch about having to pay 5 bucks for a quality loaf can go shove it!.... Great eye-opener, thanks for the awesome content.
Can you imagine spending a 1/3 of your daily wage on freaking bread???
5 bucks? Where do you live, Iceland??
@@BichaelStevens it's quality 🍞
@@PaleRejent 1 euro here........
@@BichaelStevens it's even less than a euro here
Life expectancy 42? I'll let my 41 year old baker husband know that I'll soon be looking for a candle maker 😂😂
A butcher might be a better provider. 😂
I'm a butcher.
My inlaws owned their own bakery but both began as a baker and cake decorator for safeway. In later years he developed emphysema and lung issues and couldn't breathe from flour dust so they retired.
So much appreciation to the humility of this bakery team, through their experience both modern bakers and testing Victorian techniques is quite a learning lesson comparing between two different time periods.
I love how visibly heart-broken the bakers get when they first add the chalk. It goes to show how dedicated they are to their craft.
I really loved some of their individual perspectives throughout the video. John Foster with his morbid sense of humour and the way he took it all in and related things to things we still enjoy or deal with today. John Swift with his reflections on the unspoken ugly compromises his forebears most likely made. Harpreet with the undue brutality of a trade which should have been more modernized and happier at the time...
I was a baker for a year. I left because I hated my bosses and their ill treatment of me. I wanted to be a baker because my great grandfather had gone into this business in Mexico. He had 2 types of bakeries, the one for miners & the one for the Europeans and the Middle Easterners. To wonder if he might have done this too when he first started makes me sad. But then, I think of his little green English book with bread recipes & his notes in the margins and I hope that he didn't suffer so long before he found success in clean & pure bread.
@M I A Its all that expat german blood in the mexis that makes them so good at using ovens.
Ah I hope you still carry a love for bread
Respect to your abuelo.
@M I A Mexicans are good at pretty much everything they put their hands to.
@M I A well they are just desert Spanish
When you read Das Kapital, you understand the rage behind the work.
I'm surprised more people didn't revolt
As a baker straight out of school, i did 18hour shifts especially around easter. But nothing like that. You heard stories from the old hands about the mixing troughs of yesteryear. But the mind boggles seeing that. I had great uncle's who would have been baking circa 1900 so they would have missed the early part but they came from a line of family bakers, who would have been involved in some of that stuff. It's crazy to think that we used to moan about machinery taking away jobs, wishing for the good old days before supermarkets. Not sure the good old days were that good. And we have a social safety net and none of them did. Very humbling, very informative. What a great docudrama.
When I started we mixed sponges in huge troughs and wheeled them into proof boxes before the first shift. It was much easier when we changed over to brew tanks. The flour was drawn over to them by a vacuum system and the only thing we had to add was the bagged brewers yeast we bought from Anheuser Busch. We had smaller tanks attached to the mixers for the Guard (calcium propionate) and other chemicals.
It should be noted by you that the machines present their own particular dangers not the least of which is the high voltage necessary to run them. I had a friend who was a maintenance man who was blinded two weeks and burned badly when he arced a 660 breaker box with a screw driver. The fact that he wasn't hurt when it blew him 30 feet across the makeup area was a miracle. Easier rarely means safer.
There's no such thing as the good old days, that's for certain. Maybe a few little things made life feel more rewarding.
My grandparents grew up in the middle of the Canadian plains on isolated farms and were pulled from school in 3rd grade to work, else the family may starve.
I'm a casual baker at best, and seeing chalk being added to the flour horrified me.. if I were a true baker, I would've cried at that scene...
Yea and it was pretty much needed because of widespread calcium deficiency
It truly was hard work baking. As for chalk being added, today people still bake with bleached flour and enriched flour. As for me when you know better, you do better. Economically you do what you can, with what is available and what you can afford.
@@Crossano True. A lot of 19th century children of the working poor and destitute were born with deformed legs bones and deformed pelvis bones due to calcium deficiency, which could spell death for girls/young women during labour if they got pregnant. And chalk at least isn't harmful to health when swallowed. Where it gets nasty is when dough was adulterated with worthless "bilk" stuff like sawdust/sawmill wood shavings (as human gut biome can't digest cellulose) or plaster to make the bread loaf heavier, as it was sold by weight.
@@TF2CrunchyFrog and alum was added a lot, I believe.
@@TF2CrunchyFrog plaster??? 😱😱😱
This is super interesting and in some ways horrifying. Also can you imagine making 400-500 million pounds of flour into bread annualy for the city of Rome from 50 BC to 400 AD? There were an estimated 500 bakeries in the city. We know th government had difficulty keeping and recruting bakers (pistores, 'pounders,' in Latin) on the job. 1.500,000 million pounds a day or 3000 pounds per bakery? 30,000 bakers? And many types and qualities of breads.
Every time I hear about how poor the conditions of the average working class family were back before about 1920, I am very glad to live in modern times.
I am not a baker, but I was a cook for a long time and work as a waiter. I don't even know if they had proper full service restaurants back then, and I would certainly be poor and living in these conditions.
People on welfare now live much better than blue collar workers even 60 years ago.
Everything was hard except for being an aristocrat, a landowner or being born rich. The people who did the hardest work got the smallest reward and those who did either the easiest or no work got everything. Probably why communism looked so tempting.
Many people still live under similar conditions. Sure, today is much easier, but that doesn't mean it's ideal. If u aren't privilegend to be born in exploitative capitalist contry you still struggle.
Without the upper levels of society, many of the lower levels would not be employed... Communism is a scam for idiots...
@@CurmudgeonExtraordinaire Name checks out.
@@maiyihuang4552 -- Awh, did I trigger a communist sympathizer? Bless your heart...
@@CurmudgeonExtraordinaire They would exist tho. Rich people are not the only ones that needed to eat. I mean, if you listened to the video, it was mainly the poor people that bought the bread of these bakers. The rich people had people working in their estate to bake their bread. So they were just taking the profits of these small city bakeries and working them to death.
Im a farmer boy. used to work hard and long time. caring heavy food to the animals and all. My friend once invited me to make bread like they did before. After 1h I broke down and had to rest. You cant even understand how hard it is to mix flour and water
Laws to fine workers if they don't weigh bread, no laws to keep them from being locked underground for 16 hours in a hole full of soot, flour, and smoke. What a wonderful society.
People really do forget how physical a job baking can be. I used to knead my bread dough by hand when I made some, but after being diagnosed with a chronic pain condition it just became impossible, the process of making a small batch of dough that made two loaves of bread would leave me bed bound for days on end recovering. So we got a good strong stand mixer with a dough hook and it is world's and away easier the only thing I have to do now is scrape the bowl to make sure everything gets incorporated properly and shape my loaves
I'm glad your chronic condition isn't stopping you from making bread. Seeing the passion the bakers in the documentary and comments have for their bread is a pleasant surprise to me.
I don't think anyone would forget that Baking is a very physical Job. But I damit I never thought it would be the most Dangerous Job in the vctorian age.
When I was making my own bread I used a bread machine. Tip the ingredients in (in the correct order), press the button, come back when it beeps and the whole house is smelling of fresh baked bread.
I complicated the process by grinding my flour by hand each day, but the bread-making part was gloriously easy.
People really underestimate the efficiency boost of a well made tool
I heard being a chimney sweep was a lot worse! They used to get kids to do that work that was slave labor and force them to clean out chimneys by crawling up through them. Lots of children died from them getting stuck and or dying from soot/smoke inhalation due to their bosses setting a fire underneath them for motivation. Not to mention the health problems they had.
Not the least being Carcinoma of the Testicles and of the Penis, from the Benzene and Tar. compounds in the Soot.
If I recall correctly there was a specific type of (I believe) testicular cancer linked to chimney sweeps
@@sarahamira5732 Soot wart. It was a skin cancer on the scrotum. In the past chimney boys were sent up naked. After the discovery of this cancer there was a labor movement to make these boys wear protective clothes.
Can confirm: Victorian baking is TOUGH. I used to volunteer at a museum's rural Victorian bake kitchen. It's hard, sweaty, and time consuming, but incredibly rewarding. Nothing beats it when visitors tell you your baking is delicious. 🥰
Your sweat is... Delicious? Ew
@@runed0s86 yum
Sweat bread? *MonkaS*
they sweating a lot, natural human salt
@Karl with a K if you really could help winners win, why are you a loser? No offense, i'm genuinely curious. Those 21 subscribers seem to think a pyramid scene would better help them achieve success (maybe that's why they dont tell their friends about your content). Not really a "winner" are you?
I really enjoyed this video. I almost cried when I saw the chalk and alum being added. Just knowing how things are today with people wanting to cut corners made me mad. People still want to cut corners and haven’t learned from the past. All of this regulation and people can’t comprehend why we do it to this degree. It’s a shame.
Nothing like pink slime in the meat of fast food restaurants ……
Chalk ironically enough would have been equivalent to the modern "added calcium".
What’s wrong with using machines for baking?