The historian is probably used to lecturing 500 first year undergrads if her delivery is anything to go by
I loved this, it fascinates me how much of western history was simply pure hardship yet humans survived and reproduced, this type of thing really exposes all of our wasteful consumption habits. I was eating the last of the Quality Street watching it

I really enjoyed this last night - loved the bit where they were trying to lift that massive bag (was it 20 stone...) of flour, which the old-time bakers could have lifted single-handed. Just shows how we've changed - health and safety would have a fit these days.

I thought it was going to be based on something from Viz.

I was surprised they did not have something like a porter's trolley, I can't imagine they are a recent invention. Even a quite crude one would make the sacks easier to move.

They almost certainly would have had some form of trolley or barrow. Heavy goods like that have been moved on 'trolleys' for thousands of years. The only real lifting would be loading or unloading or carrying just a few feet.

No way.
Most bakehouses had a flour loft, and the bags would be carried up an external flight of stairs by the Miller's draymen.

The Bakers would then tip the bag of flour down a chute into the bakehouse, or down a chute that was positioned over the mixing bowl.

280lb was a "sack" of flour and a baker would have to lift it single handed.

I started working in bakeries when 32kg was the new standard bag size, 70lb or quarter of a sack. I was expected to carry one of those on each shoulder.

A trolley would be useless.

'Hard work never killed anyone, but it's left many bent into awful shapes'
Frankly humping about 20 stone bags of flour looked like one of history's more stupid activity's.
I'm guessing driven by the Millers, they probably used the Mill machinery to hump the bags about at source, so everyone else just had to suffer the bags been that size.
I bet there was some macho peer pressure bollox in there too, 'be a man, lift the sacks'
One of the Bakers did mention how it left some of the Bakers of old deformed, I can quite believe it.

I see a fair amount of excessive humping working in construction and it gives me the irrit at times, but I'm in cranage so rarely do any lifting myself these days.

Where does history meet baking, I don't get the reference.

Plenty had wasteful consumption habits in those days, but only by the rich!

There's been a whole rash of historical cooking programmes over the last few years, am beginning to get quite well up on it by now. I worked out that the reason they made a mess of the expensive loaves last night was that they didn't seal up the oven door with spare dough the way they used to do in the medieval cookery programmes a couple of years back, for example. As everyone now knows, that both retains the heat and gives you a clue when the bread is ready.

Far from it! Did you know that in Victorian times was a market for second-hand tea leaves? it was a well-known cook's perk that they could keep the profits!

Used tea leaves were bought to boil with various chemicals to dye them, and used to adulterate fresh tea. Similarly old coffee grounds were mixed with various other ingredients such as chicory, sand, gravel, and chopped roasted vegetables and used to adulterate fresh coffee.

No mention of bread adulteration this week but from the flashes of next week's programme it will feature there, although adding alum to flour to whiten bread had been done for decades by then, even if technically illegal. Other things added into flour included mashed potatoes, plaster of Paris, pipe clay and sawdust.

Oh well I'm only 'into' the 'Farm team, so I've missed this historical cooking progs.

I'm suffering Farm withdrawal symptoms now, must see if I've got Wartime Farm in my archive.

I think it was partly that (there seemed to be a big hole at the bottom corner of the oven door), and also they raked out the embers before they'd even started shaping the loaves, so it lost heat.

So with the technology available at the time, how would you have done the job?

I doubt very much they lifted the flour sacks for "fun", but because they had no choice...

I never knew about the used tea leaves and coffee, makes sense when you think about it.

Prince M hard work has killed more people than disease and war combined throughout history. People weren't stupid, they had no choice.

And of course in earlier times they was a good market for the 'output' from the people who had drunk the tea!

The previous series on Killers in the Home in various periods went into bread adulteration. I think they made some bread adulterated in various ways. It was very serious because apart from the dangers from the actual substances used, it meant the people eating it would not be getting much nutriution and bread would be a major part of their diet.

The alum in bread was thought by some at the time to be the main cause of rickets but this was countered by the 'sunlight' theory and later knowledge of the role of vitamin D. However, more recent considerations have tended to think that alum was the major cause after all as rickets were more common in areas where alum adulteration was the worst.

Bread stopped being adulterated by the end of the 19th century - but was also already a much lesser part of diet.

Bread will go mouldy much faster if it is in a bag. If out of a bag it may well never go mouldy at all.

One thing to avoid with bagged bread is temperature variations. as this will encourage the bread to 'sweat' and the damper areas go mouldy much more quickly.

I remember reading that many farm workers ended up as 'bent' old men because of the weight the were expected to pitch with forks.

We put shop bought sandwich bread in the freezer until needed. Then in the fridge.
When I bake bread it goes in a freezer bag but is kept in the fridge.

The blindingly obvious option of not starting with 20 stone sacks in the first place.
Split it up into smaller sacks and you can use 2 bodies, a rope and wheel on an external wall and haul it up and into a window.
It's not like labour was expensive, women can lift 30 kilo sacks, whole family can get involved, rather than just a few men.
Why did they 'have' to be 20 stone sacks, I'd take a guess they weren't moving 20 stone sacks of goods at the docks and markets around the country or even the world.

I met a few of these old fellas in the construction game, who've been busy with shovels for 30+ years, funny shapes, buggered knees, etc.
Tunnellers and drainage are the worst for it IMO.

You can imagine how it worked, you pull a muscle, so you start lifting or moving at an odd angle to avoid tweeking that muscle, but because you're never off work long enough for it to heal properly, 30 years later and you're in a right state.

It's true that food adulteration has gone on for centuries, but much less so by local rural bakers because they depended on a reputation and also knew most of the people they were baking for.
The height of adulteration was industrial towns in the the Victorian period, selling to a fairly anonymous customer. Food adulteration led to the rise of pre-packaged 'branded' foods.