A baker is someone who makes bakes and sells breads, rolls,
biscuits or cookies, and/or crackers using an oven or other concentrated heat
source. Cakes and similar foods may also be produced, as the traditional
boundaries between what is produced by a baker as opposed to a pastry chef have
blurred in recent decades. The place where a baker works is called a bakery. The first groups of people to bake bread were
ancient Egyptians, around 8000 BC. During the middle Ages it was common for
each landlord to have a bakery, which was actually a public oven; Housewives
would bring dough that they had prepared to the baker,
who would tend the oven and bake them into bread. As time
went on, bakers would also sell their own goods, and in that some bakers acted
dishonestly, tricks emerged: for example, a baker might have trap door in the
oven or other obscured areas, that would allow a hidden small boy or other
apprentice to take off some of the dough brought in for baking. Then the
dishonest baker would sell bread made with the stolen dough as their own. This
practice and others eventually lead to the famous regulation known as Assize of
Bread and Ale, which prescribed harsh penalties for bakers that were found
cheating their clients or customers.
