Scales and Weights. Troughs.
The troughs in which the flour is kept; the scoop and scales for weighing small quantities; the claw for moving and the steelyard for weighing sacks, are the other principal objects seen in a mill. Jacob’s ladder is the name given to a revolving band fitted with a number of leathern cups. These revolve with the band through the flour and serve to carry it up a shaft from one floor to another.
Steelyard.
THE BAKER.
BAKING OVEN AND KNEADING TROUGH.
Of all the trades that are carried on in large towns there is none more important than that of the Baker. In some parts of the country, where people make their own bread at home, or at all events have all the materials for making it, and know how to mix the different ingredients, it is of less consequence; but only imagine what would be our dismay in London, if we got up some morning and heard that all the bakers had agreed not to send in the rolls for breakfast, and that we must be satisfied to live upon puddings and vegetables until they set to work again to make bread.
And yet, in the early part of their history, several nations of which we read at school had no knowledge of the trade of a Baker. Until they discovered the art of making proper bread, and somebody showed them the use of an oven, the Romans made their meal into a sort of porridge, or knew no better than to mix it into flat cakes, which they cooked on hot stones or in the wood ashes of their fires. The Anglo-Saxons were a little better off, for they mixed leaven with their dough, to make the cakes lighter and better; but you will remember—by the story of King Alfred, who when he was in disguise and going to watch the Danish camp, was left in the neatherd’s hut to watch the cooking of the cakes—that they were baked in the embers of burnt wood upon the hearth.