It is, however, probable that watermills were known at a very early period in England. Strutt cites a passage from a charter by Ulfere, in 664, which warrants the supposition.[III_45]
It would be difficult to point out the precise date of the first employment of mills; nevertheless, Somner informs us, in his “Antiquities of Canterbury,”[III_46] that the Anglo-Normans of that place ground their corn. “There was,” says he, “sometime a windmill standing neare the nonnery without Ridingate, which the hospitall held by the grant of the nonnes there: the conditions mutually agreed upon, at the time of the grant, were that the nonnes, bearing the fourth part of the charge of the mill, should reap the fourth part of the profit of it, &c. * * * and this about the reign of King John.”
The bran was separated from the flour by means of a sieve; the dough was made, and sent to the bakers to be baked. The poor contented themselves with cakes baked under the ashes.[III_47]
Something remains to be said of windmills. We will say but little on the subject: this aerial mechanism—which the knight-errant, Don Quixote, of imperishable memory, thought it necessary to fight with sword and lance—was unknown before the Christian era in any nation whose writers have transmitted to us the least traces of their civilisation; but nothing proves that windmills were unknown to others. This opinion seems to be well-founded, from a passage of the chronicler Winceslaus, who relates, in his “History of Bohemia,” that the first watermill raised in that country was in the year of Christ 718, and that no other was in use before (antea) but mills built on the summit of mountains, which were put in motion by the wind.[III_48] It appears, then, that there is some untruth in the assertion, that this sort of mill was introduced into Europe, about the year 1040, by the first Crusaders, on their return from the East.[III_49] At all events this question is no doubt very deserving the laborious search of the learned; it has but a secondary interest for the gastrophilist. It matters little to him whether he owes the grinding of his corn to the breath of a zephyr or to the slimy source of a river; all he requires is good flour, because it enters into a great number of culinary preparations—and, first of all, bread is made from it.
IV.
MANIPULATION OF FLOUR.
Man has not always eaten fine wheaten bread, biscuits, or sponge cakes; and, for many centuries, the inexperience of his palate prevented his imagining or understanding those magiric combinations, that science of good living,[IV_1] which requires time and serious study. Nature makes us hungry; art creates, modifies, and directs the appetite—these are incontestable truths, which this work will serve to unfold, and, if necessary, to prove, should any of our readers unfortunately not be already convinced of the depth of these wise axioms.
Let us go no further back than the year 2000 before the Christian era, and enter together the tent of the father of nations—Abraham. We might lead you to the fire-side of each of the nineteen patriarchs who preceded him, but that would take us too far.
In the interior of this nomad dwelling, Sarah, the venerable companion of the Pastor-King, has just prepared, with flour and water, round pieces of flattened paste, which she places on the hearth, and covers afterwards with hot ashes.[IV_2] It was thus that princes and servants made bread in the East. The Jewish people who inhabited the Desert ate no other kind;[IV_3] and the Prophet Elijah, reposing under the shade of a juniper tree, appeased his hunger with this simple and primitive food.[IV_4] Sometimes, however, at certain periods of solemnity, the Hebrews used a gridiron, placed on the coals, or a frying-pan, into which they put the paste;[IV_5] but these various modes of cooking produced a kind of cake, dry, thin, and brittle,[IV_6] somewhat like the Jewish Passover cake, which was broken by the hand without the aid of a knife;[IV_7] they were called lechem, choice and chief food,[IV_8] and the mother of the family generally renewed them each day.[IV_9] The inhabitants of the East thought so much of bread, that it was considered a special mark of regard and hospitality to the person to whom it was offered.[IV_10] Boaz says to Ruth: “At meal time come thou hither and eat of the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar.”[IV_11]
Although the use of bread without leaven and baked under the ashes was common among the Jews,[IV_12] it is nevertheless evident that they knew and employed, at an early period, some substance to raise the dough, which they designated by the name of seor. It was, perhaps, flour diluted with water left to get sour. Pliny assures us that of all means employed by the ancients to render bread savoury and light, this is the most simple and easy.[IV_13]
It appears not unlikely that the Hebrews learned from the Egyptians how to prepare the leaven they made use of. The period at which an allusion is made to it for the first time, in the Bible, renders this supposition likely. It is when the people of God were about to escape from the slavery of the Egyptians, and are preparing to celebrate the Passover, on the eve of their setting out for the Desert.[IV_14] The Israelites, therefore, knew how to make bread more digestive and of better taste than is generally believed—not so good, perhaps, as our delicate fancy bread, but better than the clumsy lumps of paste baked under the ashes, in the frying-pan, or on the gridiron.[IV_15] They had also ovens at a very distant period of their history—some four thousand years ago.[IV_16] These ovens were made with bricks or clay; afterwards they used iron and brass;[IV_17] but nothing in the Holy Writings shows us that any one exercised among them the trade of a baker, at least at this early period, nor, indeed, very much later.