> [!quote] [Food For Thought: Cutting Corners](https://finekettleoffish.substack.com/p/food-for-thought-cutting-corners?s=r) by Sara Fudge > One of the issues the bakers confront is adulteration. While the latter part of Victoria’s reign saw increasing prosperity and access to inexpensive wheat, sugar, and other staples through trade and colonial expansion, the mid 18th century saw some grim and grinding poverty England’s industrial cities and towns that were home to more than half the population. And while coal was the main fuel of industrial England, the fuel of the people was bread. Bread made up the vast majority of calories consumed by the ordinary people, the ones whose muscle and sweat turned the great wheels of the Industrial Revolution. > > But before the Empire made imported wheat and sugar cheap, there was a period of intense competition and little regulation. The bake houses that made bread for the toiling masses were dirty brutal places with backbreaking work, inhuman hours, and often very questionable ingredients. Flour was by far the most expensive part of the baking process so it was common for bakers to cut flour with other things. Sometimes the “things” were benign (and possibly delicious) like **potato**, but they could also veer into less edible things like **chalk** and alum. **And** what I found particularly interesting is that some of this was driven by the customers themselves: even the poorest preferred white bread, and some the more questionable additives had their origins in producing the whitest of white bread. - 💡 This is a pretty good example of [[foods that are easy to adulterate]], and might be a useful #storystem/fic for a story starring [[Avyaan]] or another baker or cook.