BAKER, a person whose occupation or business is to bake bread. See the articles BAKING and BREAD.
The learned are in great doubt about the time when baking first became a particular profession and bakers were introduced. It is however generally agreed, that they had their rise in the east, and passed from Greece to Italy after the war with Pyrrhus, about the year of Rome 583. Till which time every housewife was her own baker; for the word pistor, which we find in Roman authors before that time, signified a person who ground or pounded the grain in a mill or mortar to prepare it for baking, as Varro observes. According to Athenæus, the Cappadocians were the most applauded bakers, after them the Lydians, then the Phœnicians.—To the foreign bakers brought into Rome, were added a number of freed-men, who were incorporated into a body, or, as they called it, a college: from which neither they nor their children were allowed to withdraw. They held their effects in common, and could not dispose of any part of them. Each bake-house had a patronus, who had the superintendency thereof; and these patroni elected one out of their number each year, who had superintendence over all the rest, and the care of the college. Out of the body of the bakers were every now and then one admitted among the senators.—To preserve honour and honesty in the college of bakers, they were expressly prohibited all alliance with comedians and gladiators; each had his shop or bake-house, and they were distributed into fourteen regions of the city. They were excused from guardianships and other offices, which might divert them from their employment.—By our own statutes bakers are declared not to be handicrafts. No man for using the mysteries or sciences of baking, brewing, surgery, or writing, shall be interpreted a handicraft. The bakers were a brotherhood in England before the year 1155, in the reign of king Henry II. though the white bakers were not incorporated till 1407, by king Edward III. and the brown bakers not till 1521, in king James I.'s time. Their hall is in Harp-lane, Thames-street; and their court-day on the first Monday of the month.—They make the 19th company; and consist of a warden, 4 masters, 30 assistants, and 140 men on the livery, besides the commonalty.—The French had formerly a great baker, grand panetier de France, who had the superintendency of all the bakers of Paris. But, since the beginning of this century, they have been put under the jurisdiction of the lieutenant-general de police. In some provinces of France, the lord is the only baker in his seignory; keeping a public oven, to which all the tenants are obliged to bring their bread. This right is called sur-nagium, or furnaticum, and makes part of the bannalie.