What was the bread of the early English like? Our research hasn’t yet reached the point where we can give the last word about the bread of the Anglo-Saxons, but the basic facts are fairly clear. It’s predictable that early English bread differed in innumerable ways from the fluffy loaves of sliced white bread you find in plastic wrappers in the supermarket. What’s perhaps more surprising is that it was also quite different from the modern “artisan loaf” you find in the local bakery. Here are five main ways in which early English bread differed from modern bread, and a few topics for another day.

Source: It’s Bread, Jim, But Not As We Know It at The Early English Bread Project: “Bread as a cultural force in early England”