Seen this claim in fantasy and medieval fiction, bakers scamming customers by replacing flour with sawdust.
Would this not be instantly apparent to consumers?
I’m not familiar with these stories. However sawdust was not readily found in medieval times in a form that could remotely substitute for flour, or even coarsely ground grain. Saws were rare then, and not the kind of fine tooth cabinetry saws that produce fine sawdust. That said, clearly if it’s whole grain flour some amount of fine sawdust would not be easily detected in bread. It’s probably not much, at some point the dough won’t form properly or rise.
Also, considering some forms of hard or lightly risen breads that include nuts and other ingredients you could hide a lot of sawdust in all that.
For broad definitions of “sawdust”, this was experimented with in the modern day.
It was a common adulterant in the 19th century. Prior to food purity laws, people could put whatever they wanted into food.
Here’s a quote mentioning sawdust:
The chalk in bread was an amusing case: it was finally banned. Years later, people started being concerned about not getting enough calcium, so bread was enriched with calcium carbonate – chalk.
What was the rationale for adding alum to bread? What was it in lieu of?
Alum was used as a whitening agent for flour.
Medieval craftsmen were quite familiar with rasps and various sandpaper substitutes, both of which produce sawdust as fine as you like.
Not quite sawdust, but wood pulp has been used in many commercially prepared foods, including those from fast food restaurants. It’s been going on for years and is used as filler, or a thickening agent. As you can imagine, there’s no health benefit to it as wood pulp is basically cellulose, which cannot be digested. As for the companies that add wood pulp to its foods, they say cellulose is cellulose is cellulose, whether it comes from a carrot or wood…
grude, dude. When I read the title and saw it was you, I assumed this was going to be about a present day practice in Trinidad. 
That statement sounds extremely unlikely. “saws were rare then?” What, then, was the source of sawn wood used in construction? Medieval buildings in towns and estates weren’t built with undressed timber. I’d like to se a cite.
As a counter-cite, the Wikipedia page on sawmills confirms that they have a long history going back to classical times, and in particular
These were reciprocating saws, by the way, which duplicated the action of sawyers with a saw pit. The circular saw was a much later innovation. Which brings up another point – man-powered saws were there when mill-powered saws weren’t. All saws produce sawdust – you don’t need fine-toothed saws. If you need fine dust you can sieve out the coarser stuff.
You think saw dust is bad? a long time ago I read a piece in Natural History magazine about bakers adulterating flour with marble dust to make their bread whiter. And this wasn’t modern history, but stuff from centuries ago.
I read once of attempts, during a siege, to make bread using ground bones. As delicious as that sounds, it didn’t work out so well.
I saw a documentary a few years ago where a Chinese bakery was using cardboard in their buns. They looked delicious and apparently tasted fine, since they were selling them.
Here’s a cite I could find quickly about the dearth of saws long ago. It’s about Viking ship construction, put the point is clear.
The saws that were available were made of iron and were very thick producing large chips. In addition pit saws would have been used on freshly cut trees which would produce wet pulpy chips, sifting fine sawdust from that would not work well, and more than that not worth the effort for a dishonest baker.
As I said there were heavy breads that you could hide rocks in, but coarse sawdust found from most of the few saws at the time would be easily noticed in fine flour risen breads.
Blake’s point about rasps is important, that would be the most likely source of find sawdust, but I doubt large piles of sawdust were produced in one place in the way you’d find them at a modern mill or woodshop.
We’ve got dueling saw references, then. I maintain that
1.) There were plenty of carpenter’s saws back then, too, in addition to the pit saws
2.) even pit saws produce multiple sizes of sawdust, especially as they dry out and get moved around
3.) I’ll bet you had plenty of sawdust, especially fine stuff, at carpenter’s shops.
Please note, as well, the four century gap between the Domesday Book and the Wikipedia cite. I’m not sure how significant that is, though. I’d be willing to bet there was plenty of fine sawdust from saws in the Roman Empire.
The number of carpenter’s saws may be unknown. They would have had small teeth, and probably re-purposed as they wore down, and corrosion could have destroyed the evidence of the teeth in any remains.
I don’t argue that, but going to the trouble of gathering fine sawdust for a what would only be a small time scam doesn’t sound worth the trouble. There were bakers with large ovens and they wouldn’t be risking their clientele (and maybe their lives) by selling noticeably adulterated bread.
Possibly, but there wouldn’t have been a lot of carpentry shops. Wheelwrights and maybe weapon makers would have the tools and the demand for finely worked wood. I don’t know, but I think only royalty and the church could afford fine wood-working.
Can’t say, but Roman builders and craftsmen were likely more advanced than their later medieval counterparts.
To be fair, a lot of the dressing of large timbers in the early Medieval period would be done by splitting the wood and using an adze on it, rather than our modern quarter-sawn timber (see my second link below) .
But it’s crazy to say saws were rare even then - the Mästermyr Toolchest from Gotland contained more than one saw. That’s just one guy’s toolbox and there’s no sign he was particularly elite. And as you said, by the High Medieval, sawmills were a thing again.
It would not surprise me that carpenters could find a ready market for what sawdust they produced as an adulterant - but it would surprise me they they produced anything like enough sawdust for it to become a significant one. This was an era when used you every part of the pig bar the oink, and absolutely everything had a value. Sawdust in the sausages seems a good use.
No matter what you do you will need some gluten or gluten like component to create a dough that supports itself enough to rise and cohere as a loaf. It doesn’t seem viable to make any of the adulterants actual alternatives to flour. Certainly not the cheap ones.
Well, we know one carpenter had 3 different ones…
:dubious:
Carpentry doesn’t have to mean “fine wood-working”. Wooden items were ubiquitous, and not everyone had the skills to make their own (or they had other jobs to do) - of course there were carpenter’s shops everywhere. Where were people going to get their chests, and seats, and doors, and tables?
Why? Was there a period when people forgot how to work wood? Have you ever seen medieval woodworking?
Plus, in anything resembling a small town or local neighbourhood it would become common gossip if the local carpenter made regular deliveries to the baker. I would imagine that sort of activity being more common in the more likely anonymity of large city slums of the 1800’s per RealityChuck’s quote.
The place to adulterate the flour would be at the miller. Sawdust of mixed sizes could be mingled with the whole grain and the lot milled into flour of a uniform texture.