I had lunch with a couple of friend last week. As usual, there was about as much, or maybe more, talking than eating. We covered a lot of subjects, but the waiter mentioned something about “a baker’s dozen.” We all knew what that meant, but there was some disagreement as to how it came to be.
So — here I am waiting for the washing machine to finish, and I figured it was time for some of my extensive research. I hadn’t done that in a long time and I didn’t want to lose my “skill” — or — as I like to call it, “my gift.”
The popular story as to the phrase’s origin is that a medieval law specified the weight of loaves of bread and any baker who shorted a customer was in for dire punishment. So, bakers would include a thirteenth loaf with each dozen just to be safe. The story is kind of true. There was such a law, but the practice of adding an extra loaf to the dozen had nothing to do with the fear of punishment.
The law the story is referring to was the Assize of Bread and Ale, first promulgated in England in 1266. There are various versions of the law, but they all related the weight and price of loaves of bread that were sold on the market. During years of good harvests, bakers could make more bread than they could sell locally, so they would sell the excess loaves to hucksters, or middlemen. But since the weight and price was strictly regulated, the only way for these distributors to make money would be to give them extra loaves. The baker would give the huckster a thirteenth, or vantage, loaf for each dozen. The extra loaf provided the profit for the middleman.
The practice of adding the thirteenth loaf is older than the phrase. The phrase apparently only dates to 1599.
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