Major events in the "Bread Revolution"?
I'll start with my question, to pique your interests, and then explain why I'm asking:
The Question: What, would you say, are the major events of the "bread revolution" of the last 20-30 years? By this I mean events which stimulated a great deal of interest in either buying or making at home high quality bread (or both). For instance, the publication of the Bread Baker's Apprentice, or Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day are recent events that might qualify, although I don't know what the real magnitude of those are.
Why I'm asking: When I'm not baking bread, I'm working on a doctorate in economics. For some time I've wanted to combine my two interests and write a paper on the economics of bread. Now I'm toying with the notion of examining whether home baking is a substitute or a complement for purchased bread. That is, when people bake more bread, do they also buy more bread, or less? Normally one would think that making anything at home would be a substitute for buying it, but in the case of fancy artisan bread it could be that making bread gives you a taste for good bread, which you then buy more of. Dan Lepard tells that latter story about bread in Europe in The Art of Handmade Bread.
To answer this question, somewhere or other I need to obtain data on sales and pricing of bread (or perhaps flour--I've sent a pleading, long-shot, e-mail to King Arthur Flour Company). But I also need some kind of sudden shift in either home baking or bread demand. I'm thinking there are suitably big events in the "bread revolution" that would provide this kind of shift.
Hopefully that all makes sense. So: What are the major events of the "Bread Revolution"?