Unhurried canal transport certainly was. It was also cheap.

Unhurried canal transport certainly was. It was also cheap. So for that matter was sea transport. In the 1920s, when the railways had largely superseded the canals as a means of internal freight haulage, it was cheaper for American farmers to send wheat 700 miles from St Louis to the port of New Orleans and thence across the Atlantic to Britain than it was for an English farmer to send his wheat by rail freight across three counties from Somerset to London, a distance of about 200 miles.

E. David, English bread and yeast cookery (1977), 16

'Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread?' demands the Prophet Isaiah

Writing about a subject so ancient and so universal as the baking of bread  it is hard for a modern author to find fresh words to express his views and observations. Over and over again I have found that something I had been struggling for days to put on paper has been said long before, and in rather more graphic words than I could achieve. 'Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread?' demands the Prophet Isaiah. I doubt if I could ever convey my feelings about shop bread quite so devastatingly.

E. David, English bread and yeast cookery (1977), xvii

I feel as uneasy as I do if there is no evidence of wine glasses or bottles

In fact, if I go into a friend's dining room and see no loaf on the table, I feel as uneasy as I do if there is no evidence of wine glasses or bottles. Now that I've been forced into making my own bread, I often take it with me. Nobody takes any offence ... It's only a matter of time before the braver and angrier among us start taking our own bread to restaurants. After all there are plenty of establishments to which we may take our own wine. I see nothing to prevent us taking our own bread as well. The restaurateurs can always increase their cover charges t include the loan of a bread knife - if they have one.

E. David, 'The Baking of an English Loaf', collected in J. Norman (ed.) Is there a nutmeg in the house? (2000), 220

NB. When Elizabeth David talks of being 'forced' to bake her own bread, she means because commercial bread is substandard, not actually being forced.