In 'Life in a Medieval City' by Frances and Joseph Gies, there is a good description of the shopping centre of Troyes, France, in the 13th century:
'In Troyes most of the food purveyors are clustered in the narrow streets that surround Saint-Jean - the rue Domino, the rue des Croisettes, the Court de Rencontre. Many street names designate the trade practised there - the rue de la Corderie (ropemakers) rue de la Grande-Tannier and rue des la Petite-Tannerie, rue de l'Orfevrerie (Goldsmiths), rue de l'Epicerie (grocers).
Signs furnish a colourful punctuation to the rows of wooden houses - a bush for the vintner, three gilded pills for the apothecary, a white arm with stripes of red for the surgeon-barber, a unicorn for the goldsmith, a horse's head for the harness-maker.
Shoppers must watch their step in the streets, which are full of unpleasant surprises. In the butchers' quarter, slaughtering is performed on the spot, and blood dries in the sun amid piles of offal and swarms of flies. Outside the poulterers' shops geese tied to the aprons of the stalls, honk and gabble. Chickens and ducks, their legs trussed, flounder on the ground, along with rabbits and hares.
Near the butchers and poulterers stalls are other food speciality shops. A pastry shop offers wafers at three deniers a pound. The spice-grocer displays a variety of wares. Vinegar comes in big jars at from two to five deniers. Moste edible oils cost seven to nine deniers, although olive oil is double that price. Salt is cheap (five pounds for two deniers), pepper dear (four deniers an ounce), sugar even dearer. Even honey is expensive.
At the bakery, where an apprentice may be seen removing loaves from the oven with a long-handled wooden shovel, the prices of the different loaves are legally fixed. so are the weights, with variations permitted from year to year depending on the wheat crop. Some bakers cheat on quality or weight, and for this reason each baker must mark his bread with his own seal. A detected cheater ends up in the pillory with one of his fraudulent loaves hung around his neck.
Besides the food shops, there are the pedlers. About Terce (nine o'clock) their cries augment the din of the streets. They sell fish, chicken, fresh and salt meat, garlic, honey, onions, fruit, eggs, leeks, and pasties filled with fruit, chopped ham, chicken or eel, seasoned with pepper, soft cheese, or egg. 'Good Champagne cheese! Good cheese of Brie!" cry the street vendors in paris, and probably in Troyes as well. Wine and milk are also peddled in the street.'
In 'Food and FEast in Medieval England' by Peter Hammond, the markets of London in the 14th century are described:
'Usually the market was an open space, or sometimes a street devoted to selling goods, usualy from temporary stalls set up and taken down each day. In a large town like London, some commodities had several markets devoted to their sale. Thus, among other things, meat was chiefly sold in 'Stokkes' (roughly on the site of the present Mansion House), and fish in Eastcheap and Old Fish Street. General goods (poultry, eggs, butter cheese, herbs and fruit, for example) were sold in Gracechurch Street and on Cornhill. Grain was sold in the Leadenhall Market. The Leadenhall Market was a large, open courtyard surrounded by a building several stories high. In these places the stalls were permanent, but most markets (such as Eastcheap) were street markets.
Bread, as an important part of the diet, was sold widely. Perhaps oddly in London, by an ordinance of 1377, bakers were forbidden to sell breasd 'before their own ovens' that is from theri own shops, and were supposed to sell only in the markets. This seems not to have applied in other towns. In all towns, 'hucksters' (streetsellers), usually female, were allowed to sell bread from house to house. Bread was sold in several different varieties. The most expensive was 'paindemaigne' (bread of the Lord, that is Communion bread), known in the 15th century as 'manchet'. This was made from a wholemeal flour, from which much of the bran had been removed by means of sieving (or bolting) through fine cloths. It was a pale cream colour due to the wheat germ it contained, most of which is removed from today's white bread. It also contained more of the bran. Less fine flour was made by allowing more and more of the bran to passs the sieving process, and loaves were made from these flours of increasing shades of colour. They bore many names, depending on the degree of fineness, such as 'wastel' 'bis' 'cocket' and just white. This last was apparently common, white bread, not paindemaigne. The brownest bread, made from unbolted flour, was known as 'tourte' (or panis integer). The name tourte, bis and cocket may have been apllied also to the very dark rye bread. One other type of flour used was maslin, from the mixture of rye and wheat with that name.
As implied, much food was bought in shops as well as in the markets and from hucksters. Many of these shops were grouped together, often in terraces, depending onw hat they sold, sometimes giving their name to a street that still exists, for example Milk Street and Bread Street in London. Some shops had a general stock, selling herring, mustard, candles and other goods. Other shops were more like bazaars, where up to fifty traders, all selling similar goods, shared space in large shed-like areas. Quite a number of shops sold ready prepared food, although not ale which they and the 'piebakers' were forbidden to sell. In London there were many cookshops selling roast meat of various kinds, including roast thrush and finches and geese, hens and capons baked in pastry. Sauces and puddings were also sold. They were mostly, at least in the 12th and 13th centuries, on the bakns of the River Thames.'