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6. Aerated bread – not as simple as ABC
6. Aerated bread – not as simple as ABC
One such ‘alternative’ technology was aerated bread, a loaf which its inventor and manufacturers claimed contained no yeast. Although short-lived, aerated bread left a huge legacy, forming the basis of the industrialized, mass-produced loaf so popular in the twentieth century. While a form of aerated bread was patented in 1833 it only began commercial production in the 1860s through the London-based Aerated Bread Company (ABC). The ABC is mentioned in a few social and economic histories, as its tea-rooms, opened to help sell its bread products, established a new trend in mass catering, changing bakery distribution methods and providing establishments where women could socialize and work.54
54 G. Shaw, L. Hill Curth and A. Alexander, 'Creating New Spaces of Food Consumption', in Cultures of Selling, ed. by J. Benson and L. Ugolini (Farnham: Ashgate, 2006), 81–100.
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However, there have been few serious studies relating to its aerated bread product, on which it built its empire and which, it could be claimed, laid the foundations for industrial bread production in Britain. Pure aerated bread may be a relic of history but it arguably changed the way bread was perceived by the public, and paved the way for national distribution and factory manufacture of bread in Britain. While baking powder introduced the concept of legitimized chemical additives to bread making, aerated bread helped create the concept of industrial bread production and distribution. From its outset ABC could produce ten times more bread than a typical bakery, and twenty times using double-shift working, with just one machine. The yeast-less technique also reduced the time taken from start to oven from 16 hours to 26 minutes.55
55 C. Petersen , Bread and the British Economy (Hants: Scholar Press, 1995); London Metropolitan Archives, Aerated Bread Company Minutes, ACC/2910, London Metropolitan Archives.
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Although some baking ‘factories’ were set up in Scotland during the 1860s, the preference and custom for consumers in England to eat their bread warm hindered the mechanization of bakeries and mass-production of bread.56
56 Petersen, Bread.
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Early social historian Sylvia Thrupp described a ‘cultural’ resistance to large-scale production by both bakers and consumers.57
57 S. Thrupp , A Short History of the Worshipful Company of Bakers (London: Galleon Press, 1933).
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As a result, baking until the 1870s remained labour-intensive. However, as health and hygiene rose up the social and political agenda, journeymen bakers’ physically hard and unhealthy working conditions — spending hours in dusty, unventilated buildings and sleeping in the bakery overnight while the dough fermented — were the subject of several government inquiries.58
58 J. Burnett, 'The Baking Industry in the 19th Century', Business History, 5(2) (June 1963), 98–108; R. McCance and E. Widdowson, Breads, White and Brown: Their Place in Thought and Social History (London: Pitman Medical Publishing, 1956).
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The ABC promised to transform the sweat-shop bakeries into modern bread-making factories, where flour would be processed into bread without being touched by human hand. The company also created an extensive distribution and retail network for its new product, at a time when most bakers were individual operators. By 1864 the company had 28 retail outlets and 100 wholesale distributors for its bread and in 1923 it owned 150 branches and 250 tea rooms. An examination of new company listings in the Financial Times between 1888–1910 shows that at least eight regional Aerated Bread Companies were capitalized through the length and breadth of the country from the Edinburgh & Glasgow Aerated Bread Co. Ltd to the Brighton and South Coast Aerated Co. Ltd and the Bristol Cardiff & Swansea Aerated Bread Co. Ltd.59
59 Financial Times, 1988 (21 June, 1; 2 August, 4; 18 October, 2; 19 December, 4); 1989 (23 January, 4; 2 February, 4; 20 February, 2; 6 March, 4; 25 March, 3); 1990 (25 April, 4); 1892 (13 December, 2); 1893 (1 November, 4); 1894 (25 October, 4); 1910 (18 February, 4).
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ABC founder John Dauglish filed several patents for the manufacture of aerated bread between October 1856 and December 1864.60
60 J. Dauglish, 1856 Patent. Making Bread. No. 2293 (Oct 1). British Library Patent Department; J. Dauglish, 1857. Patent. Preparation of Dough. No 2224. (Aug 21). British Library Patent Department; J. Dauglish, 1864. Patent. Manufacture of Aerated Bread. No. 677 (Mar 16). British Library Patent Department; G. Shaw, L. Hill Curth and A. Alexander, 'Creating New Spaces of Food Consumption'; R. Leon, 'The Rise and Fall of the Aerated Bread Company', Camden History Review, 25 (2001), 47–50; A. Rosling Bennett, London and Londoners in the 1850s and 1860s (London: T Fisher Unwin, 1924).
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Dauglish intended to eradicate the need for both yeast fermentation and baking powder leavening agents by pumping gas or aerated water into ‘unadulterated’ dough. Having established his priority to the product through patents, Dauglish then launched a publicity campaign to seek institutional accreditation before starting commercial production with the ABC in 1862. Dauglish presented a paper on aerated bread to the Society of Arts in 1860, for which he received a silver medal, and promoted his product to fellow scientists, sanitarians and consumers as a pure and unadulterated, scientifically-manufactured, healthy loaf of bread for an industrial age.61
61 B. Richardson, On the Healthy Manufacture of Bread; a Memoir on the System of Dr Dauglish (London: Baillière, Tindall & Cox, 1884). www.oxforddnb.com
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Contemporary articles and advertisements in newspapers and periodicals indicate the efforts he made to convey this message. Even during initial trials, aerated breads received substantial publicity in the London and regional press, with editorials praising the new method of bread-making and pointing out the unpredictability and decaying action of yeast; the presence of alcohol as a by-product and the wastage of flour in the fermentation process; the hard, unhealthy and unsanitary work involved in kneading dough and leaving it to stand; and the alternative replacement of fermentation with chemical additives that may be injurious to health. Advertisements placed in many newspapers in 1858 acclaimed ‘Dr Dauglish’s Patent Process without Fermentation’ as ‘one of the wonders of the age’. In 1860 a leading article in the British Medical Journal hailed the ‘new process patented by a member of our own profession, Dr Dauglish, as one of the greatest possible boons to humanity’ as it removed the blood, sweat and tears of the journeyman baker from bread as well as improving bakers’ health by removing kneading by hand and the inhalation of flour dust.62
62 Anon, The Morning Chronicle, no. 28380 (December 7, 1857); Anon, Liverpool Mercury, no. 3075 (December 18, 1857); Anon, Manchester Times, no. 4 (January 2, 1858); Anon, Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle, January 30, 1858; Anon, September 15, 1860.
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With the introduction of ‘iron limbs worked by steam muscles’ in Dauglish’s industrialized bread-making process the working man was to be removed from the drudgery of his handicraft and elevated in ‘our social system’.63
63 A. Wynter, Our Social Bees or Pictures of Town and Country Life (London: Robert Hardwicke, 1885), chapter 16.
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The science of bread making became a metaphor for the liberation of the working man and the democratization of society.
One of Dauglish’s foremost supporters, and also a director of the company, was the sanitarian and physician Sir Benjamin Richardson, who described his method of bread manufacture as ‘the best that has been discovered (…) the cleanliest of all processes [that] calls for less drudgery [and] less objectionable labour (…) inflicts less arduous toil and so lessens the rapid wearing of the body’ while supplying a ‘purer article to those who depend largely upon the staff of life for their daily aliment’. The bread is made by ‘perfectly pure machinery and with the precision of the most perfectly acting machine’ and ‘by the aerated process of making bread all the destructive influence of fermentation is prevented. There is no chemical decomposition of the flour whatever and, therefore, no loss of material’.64
64 B. Richardson, On the Healthy Manufacture of Bread; a Memoir on the System of Dr Dauglish.
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The popular press praised the scientific and industrial nature of the bread’s production. Leisure Hour hailed Dauglish’s method as a ‘beautiful application of chemistry to common things’, describing the ‘powerful steam-engine, intricate machinery, a gas generator and a gasometer’ in the bread works as well as a ‘huge machine rising to the height of twenty feet’ looking ‘very ponderous and powerful for so peaceful a purpose’ of removing the ‘tedious process of fermentation’.65
65 Anon, Leisure Hour, no. 436 (May 3, 1860), 285.
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There was widespread amazement that it had taken so long for bread to be industrialized. Bread manufacture ‘ranking among the very first in extent and importance has as yet been maintained upon the system of the Middle Ages. The baker of today performs the operations of his trade substantially in the same way as his predecessor of two centuries ago’, noted one newspaper heralding the arrival of machine-made aerated bread, while another magazine noted it was strange that while ‘we have our miles of tunnels, colossal aqueducts and mighty bridges … railroads innumerable (and) miraculous telegraphs (…) the preparation of the “staff of life” should still be made according to an antiquated system and left in the hands of petty capitalists’.66
66 Anon, 'Our Daily Bread', Commercial Bulletin, January 6, 1866; Anon, 'The Battle of the Bakers', Dublin University Magazine, October 1872.
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Investigation of the ABC’s few surviving records from this period suggest that it sought to maximize its industrial scale operations by provisioning large institutions. Between November 1869 and 1874, ABC tendered contracts to dozens of hospitals, orphanages, asylums, charity schools, gaols and similar institutions throughout greater London. The records, however, also reveal constant financial concerns as well as some complaints about the taste of the bread. A crisis of funding led the management, with reluctance, to accept a buy-out of the company’s shares by an unwelcome investor James Childs, who subsequently took over the running of the company. The company minutes refer to ABC’s free use of Childs's patent in London during his tenure as managing director. Although there are no details in the minutes, patent records housed in the British Library show that Childs filed a patent in 1869 for ‘fermented liquid charged with gas’ to be used in the aeration of bread. According to the patent incorporating a small amount of brewers’ yeast into the aerated water allows coarser parts of the grain to be used in flour. The re-introduction of yeast, however small in quantity, would never have been acceptable under the previous sanitarian management, but it might have made aerated bread taste more like bread consumers were used to eating.67
67 Aerated Bread Company Minutes, ACC/2910, London Metropolitan Archives, London; J Childs, Manufacture of Bread and Biscuits, British Library Patent Department 3540, 7 December 1869.
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Although by 1924 journalist Alfred Rosling Bennett noted that ‘little is heard now of the mechanically mixed bread which was the company’s raison d’etre and its employees know as much of Dr Dauglish (its inventor) as they do of St. Francis of Assisi’ (as the company focused more and more on its tea rooms), the ABC already had changed the way bread was manufactured, distributed, sold and consumed.68
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