Yesterday I stumbled on the Assize of Bread, which set the price of bread in England by the price of wheat with rules like:

When a quarter of wheat is sold for 18d., then wastel bread of a farthing white and well-baked shall weigh £4 10s. 8d.

A 'quarter' here means eight bushels, or a quarter of a ton. This is a large amount of wheat, which makes sense since it's the baker buying. 'Wastel' bread meant good-quality white bread, and a 'farthing' is a quarter of a penny. In the British tradition of using confusingly similar terms for weight and currency, '£4 10s 8d' is a weight. With 20 pennies (d) to the shilling and 12 shillings (s) to the pound (£), that's 4.53 Tower pounds, which would be 3.49 lb (international avoirdupois pound, as used in the US).

I had thought the standard bread would be something cheaper than white bread, and this does look like the case later, but here cheaper breads are all given with prices relative to white bread (Ross 1956):

When the Quarter of Wheat is sold for 12d., then the Farthing Wastel Loaf shall weigh six pounds and sixteen shillings; the Cocket Loaf of the same corn and the same fineness of sieving shall weigh two shillings more than the Wastel. [The Cocket Loaf] of corn of less price shall weigh five shillings more than the Wastel. And the Simnel Loaf shall weigh two shillings less than the Wastel because it has been baked twice. The Farthing whole-loaf of wheat shall weigh a Cocket and a half. And the Treet Loaf shall weigh two Wastels. And the Loaf de omni blado shall weigh two Cockets.

The rule gave different loaf weights for different wheat prices:

Each row is a wheat price (in shillings and pence per quarter ton) and the columns are for different sources. For example, if a quarter ton of wheat cost six shillings, most sources would give a £1 2s 8d (£1.2) weight for a farthing (quarter penny) loaf.

We can also convert this into modern prices. The commodity price of wheat today is $5/bushel ($40/quarter) and I'm going to assume the bushel hasn't changed size much. The table says that if a quarter of wheat costs six shillings, then a farthing gets you a 1.2 Tower pound (15oz avoirdupois) loaf. Six shillings is 480 farthings, so a $40 quarter gives a $0.08 15oz loaf, or $0.1/lb. Cheap white bread in the grocery store today is about ten times the cost. I expect this mostly ...

hwka

hwka