Two pieces of ‘Wormer beschuit’ survive in the collection of the Zaans Museum and are claimed to be more than 300 years old: hard, dry, and crumbly. Would you still fancy a bite? Four centuries ago, baking dough twice was a vital method for preserving bread – although contemporaries claimed it would not last more than three years.
In the seventeenth century, the countryside village of Wormer hosted between 80 and 100 bakeries. What made this rusk unique, and why was this large-scale production located in a rural setting? Voices in Wormer’s notary archive help answer these questions.
Image 1. Notarial Testimony 25.05.1625 in Wormer. Waterlands Archief, Purmerend. Toegang 0701 Notarissen ter standplaats Wormer, 1612-1842, no. 5619, folio 158.
A Widow Baking for ‘an Easterling’
On 25 May 1625, the widow Mart Claes reported that ‘an Easterling [someone from North Germany or the Baltics] was with her […] to order […] six barrels of rusk’. [Image 1] The trader had asked her to deliver it to Amsterdam outside of market days. Yet, the city government restricted outsiders to selling only on weekly markets to protect local bakers. Circumventing these restrictions, the resourceful Wormer ferryman Arien Rensz handed Mart’s rusk to the trader in Enkhuizen.
This shows how the Wormer production connected people from diverse social backgrounds and places. Clearly, the history of Wormer beschuit – just like kneading its dough – is sticky and complex.
Bodies, Fire, Wind, and Water: Making Wormer Beschuit
No exact recipe survives. Instead, Wormer bakers relied on orally transmitted knowledge grounded in local tradition. Different sources, such as the local history De Zaanlandse Arcadia, other contemporary treatises and recipes, the Zaans museum collection, and the previously mentioned Wormer notarial archive aided the following reconstruction: the dough was kneaded by local labourers, placed in tin moulds, and double-baked in turf-fired ovens. [Image 2] Bakers and their assistants relied on sensory skills, honed through years of experience, to judge oven temperature and timing. After cooling, the rusk was sealed airtight in tins or wooden barrels smeared with tar.
Image 2. Jan Gillisz. van Vliet, ‘Bakker’ in series ‘Beroepen’ (Leiden, 1635). Rijksmuseum (RP-P-OB-33.384), https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/200271027.
The large-scale production of Wormer beschuit was possible through a combination of this sensorial knowledge with general trends of economic and technological expansion in the Dutch countryside. A notarial testimony from Wormer on the 30th of January 1616 indicates that the improved wind-powered corn mills were boosted local production. [Image 3] Improved water management in the early seventeenth century, along with the use of the versatile schuit ships, connected Wormer bakers and shippers, such as Mart and Arien, to trading hubs like Amsterdam where the beschuit could be exported. [Image 4] Several notarial testimonies from Wormer between 1612-1629 also testify to both the import of grain and turf and export of Wormer rusk along these waterways.
Image 3. Detail from Laurens van Teylingen and Abraham Jansz. Deur ‘Caerte Vande Wormer met haere weegen wateringen’ (Amsterdam, 1627) showing the villages of Wormer and Jisp with their mills. Rijksmuseum (RP-P-AO-9A-35A), https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/200271027.
Image 4. Detail from Hendrik Jacobsz Soeteboom’s print ‘Feestelijke optocht in Wormer, ter ere van de vrede van Munster, 1648’ (1649, Zaandam) showing Wormer schuiten and likely rusk barrels. Rijksmuseum (RP-P-OB-68.261), https://id.rijksmuseum.nl/200406607.
Vitalising and Durable: Two Types of Rusks
Both fine rusks and durable hardtack made in Wormer were sought after far and wide. In 1649, the Zaandammer publisher Hendrik Jacobsz Soeteboem states on a commemorative print that Wormer rusk ‘[…] is sent to both Indies; Brasil, to East and West […]’ and mentions many German and Dutch destinations. Free from strict guild regulations, rural bakers could adapt more flexibly to shifting demand — as Mart’s case shows.
The two types of ‘beschuit’ differed in their ingredients. In the Baltics, the fine beschuit was a valued trade good. Bakers made this type from white tarwe flour and possibly refined it with milk or butter, eggs and sugar based on Early Modern beschuit recipes. Doctors such as Steven Blankaart and Johan van Beverwijk recommended this Wormer beschuit for its revitalising qualities.
The Wormer hardtack, or hardbrood, was produced seasonally. A less refined mix of rye and wheat, this cheaper and more durable product was baked on commission, e.g., for Dutch whale hunters, and the Dutch West and East India Companies.
Wormer’s success in food preservation relied on forging connections: between different ingredients, between bodily knowledge and technological innovation, and between people entangled in a growing colonial and commercial empire. But its glory was temporary. A museum note tells us the surviving beschuit ‘belong to the last shiprusks baked’ in Wormer. Only by tasting them, we would know for sure what type of Wormer beschuit – the fine or the hardtack – has endured.
Further reading
Aten, D. (1995). Als het gewelt comt…” : politiek en economie in Holland benoorden het IJ, 1500-1800. Verloren.
de Vries, J. (2019). The price of bread: regulating the market in the Dutch Republic. Cambridge University Press.
de Vries, J. (2009). The Political Economy of Bread in the Dutch Republic. In O. Gelderbloem (Ed.), The Political Economy of the Dutch Republic (pp. 85-114). Routledge.
S. Lootsma, S (1939) Historische studiën over de Zaanstreek I. P. Out N.V, Koog a.d. Zaan.
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