Baking in a Fantasy Era

Baking - It’s a pretty normal, boring part of cooking, right?  Everyone does it; you just turn the knob and heat up the oven.

Only, you don’t.  Not in a pre-industrial age.  Baking takes a lot of energy / fuel.  In fact, few homes would be doing it, simply because it wasn’t worth heating up an oven every morning just to make a meal for your family.

So why does it matter.  We’re getting to that, but we don’t want you leaving early because you think this is unimportant to your game.  How people get their daily bread is a vitally important part of your game world, and if you don’t know how it works then the rest of your world is a poorly animated cartoon.  Really - it’s just not true or real in any sense.

So what do they do?  The wealthy, especially those who have big families or lots of servants to feed will need to have an oven and will need to fire it up.  But they aren’t going to put it in the kitchen, at least not one inside the house.  The “kitchen” with the oven goes outside, often in its own little brick building.  Why?  Too much risk of fire if you put it inside.  No matter how good the bread is, it isn’t worth burning down the whole house.

Another option is to have a very small oven - what today we call a Dutch oven.  This is a cast iron “pot” with a flat lid.  The flat lid means you can put coals on top as well as under and this gives you an oven-like cooking device.  But they are usually only 12-16” in diameter, so you’re not getting much in there.  Maybe a decent corn bread or some buttermilk biscuits.

But most people who actually want bread are going to go to the baker.  The baker will fire up his oven(s) and make a whole bunch of bread, which means the fuel he’s using goes a lot farther.  But this also means that people are going to the bakery every day.

Why does any of this matter?  Because cuisine actually matters in a world.  What is the fastest way to a man’s heart?  Through his stomach!  So love, marriage, and therefore procreation are all a part of how that guy gets fed.  We’re not being overly dramatic here (OK, maybe we are), but what people eat is the essence of their culture.  How do you tell Italians from the French?  Is he eating a baguette or pasta?  Yes, hugely over simplified, but would you expect any Italian to give up his pasta?

OK, back to baking.  If they have to go to the bakery, then here is what you now know about your cities:  1)  They are crammed with pedestrians.  Most likely they are going to the market every day for all of their food, but this puts an extra stop in their daily shopping trip.  2)  They are not eating bread (risen bread) in the morning.  It doesn’t make sense for the woman of the house to rush out pre-dawn to buy bread from the bakery, then race home to make the morning meal in time for her husband to get off to work on time.  He’s not getting yeast breads in the morning.

So, what does he get?  Maybe he gets day old bread.  Maybe they toast it so it seems not just dried out, but appropriately dried out.  Maybe he gets pancakes or flapjacks or whatever you want to call them.  Maybe he gets some kind of flat bread, though even these seem a little too much to expect in the morning.  Maybe he is getting buttermilk biscuits out of a Dutch oven.  Maybe he just gets eggs and ham, with no bread.

Here’s what else you know, though you probably knew this before:  Barter doesn’t work.  The baker cannot afford to be taking in goods in exchange for his bread.  He has to bake the bread and get it ready, then sell it quickly.  He’s not haggling over whether those apples are worth this loaf of bread.

But let’s focus on that word “loaf”.  Are they baking loaves of bread?  Maybe they only make rolls.  Why?  Because they aren’t slicing the bread.  There are no bread slicers.  If they eat sandwiches, it is most likely a roll cut in half, not a slice of bread.  If they are eating loaves, they have to tear off a piece.  That works in some cultures, but not all.  That whole thing about the greatest ____ since sliced bread?  Yeah, sliced bread is a big deal too, but these folks don’t have it.

Let’s focus on why just knowing how baking works matters to your game world.  How many game worlds have you seen where the landed estates have a smoke house and a kitchen built out back?  Now castles are different; they’re already built of stone.  But if you tour any historic estates dated 1600-1900, the kitchen is outside.  Even back in the Roman days, they bought their bread as we’re suggesting here, from a baker.

One last point that we’ll mention but not explore (yet):  What kind of oven is it?  This question is:  Is it metal and heated by a fire beneath it?  Is it clay and heated by a fire inside of it?  The point here is far less about the oven itself, but actually what it is heated with.  Are they simply burning wood?  Do they use charcoal?  or are they using something like peat bricks or coal, which could have some serious health impacts?  We’re going to have to work at it, but we are going to convince you that what they eat is important in your game world.

This post was written as part of the upcoming The Headwater Hills aka All About Famine & Agriculture, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing all sorts of ways to use magic in different ways, including some that might resemble technology and/or machinery.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 53 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.