People baked bread themselves, usually on a fixed day of the week. A time-consuming job. Until someone who had a larger oven started baking the neighbours’ bread. Some time later, someone started baking the dough supplied by the entire neighbourhood. The next step: this man started kneading dough himself, baking bread and selling it from home. In the cities, bakeries existed in the Middle Ages, in the countryside people continued to bake at home for a long time until the bakery also appeared in the village.

In the past, only the upper class could afford wheat bread, the common man ate bread made from spelt and rye. Men’s bread and poor people’s bread. The dough was made from ground grain, water and sourdough. This is a natural yeast that you get by leaving a paste of flour and water for a while until it has become sour.

Bread baking was done in the bakehouse that was separate from the farm. During the firing of the oven sparks often came out of the chimney and if they fell on the thatched roof of your house you had a problem, hence some distance.