The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-03-29
ANCIENT BREAD MAKING.
Egyptians the Pioner Farmers-Firs
 4n.. lo....n.. MIL. :.. Ar.-----.--

bSyplidnS the f'lOner FarmerS-F1fSt Water Power Mills in Norway. Bread was made of fairly respectable l quality long before the advent of the 1 days of Biblical chronology. Synchro-
 nous with the development and pro l gress of grinding stones was the im- l provement in the manner of making bread. Meisskomer, to whose delving I into subjects, on race progress much
 presents knowledge, due, discovered
 says the Flour Trade News. an eight ! pound loaf of evenly crushed grain and | we'll baked under conditions that mark
 its manufacture as long before the ad- vent Of man as he is to-day. This loaf
 has the appearance. of having baked l before an open fire, the mass of dough | thrown on a flat stone before the open
 blaze and turned until each side had
 been subjected to the heat. It is hard 1y up to the standard of our present
 bread, but the men of those days were
 not finical.
 The ancient Egyptians were the pioneers in extensive grain growing
 and bread making. Their grains were
 wheat, barely and doura, and were
 much like the grains of to-day, al- though in the samples of it unearthed
 recently there is conclusive evidence to
 show that the process of evolution goes on constantly in vegetable life.
 The Egyptians were. really the best farmer" of which we have any coher-
 ent recodd. They harvested their l wheat five months after it was put in the ground and bound it into sheaves
 much like the hand bound sheaves 0 to-day. Their threshing was done b.
 driving cattle over the floor of tht granary floors, possibly the first effolg
 of importance toward the invention of the threshing machine, <. ~.. -....,.. The old style of grinding obtained with the Egyptians, the women usually being required to perform this work
 but they had discovered the power of fernented yeast cells, as in several in
 stances leavened bread has been found
 dating to this era. It is also with tht
 Egyptians that the professional bake
 first springs into notice in the world
 There is picture writing on several
 tombs that shows bake shops longSbe
 fore the time of the dynasty. The sto
 " of Joseph conserving the abundance
 of the fat years for use during the sev
 en lean yeads shows how important
 grain and breadstuffs were to latter day Egyptians.
 Thanks to the art of the Assyrians
 and the edduring qualities of prone we
 have records to show how this ancient
 people prepared their bread. Appa-
 oY1fI A s;,,,e o ot..
 stemious people and little given to rio-
 tous feasting, even in the celebration of
 victories for their armies
 On the bronze gates of BaIawat are
 found engravings depicting the warlfke
 doings of Shahnaneser H., who ruled
 and warred in theeyears from S60 B. c.
 to S25 B. c. One engraving shows the
 women of a tribe baking bread, greaS piles of bread, for the benefit of return
 ing victorious soldiers. The Assyrians also knew how to raise grains, their hy-
 draulic machines and aqueducts show ing how they appreciated the value of irrigation. "
 Bread figured prominently in the his tory and religion of the ancient Jews.
 Their first cereals were only rye, wheat and barley, and they began their use by eating them raw after the fashion of primitive man. This is the normal
 course of progress with all peoples that early become extensive grain eaters. The grain grew wild at first and was eaten by the naked savage only as one of the legunainous plants that gave him a precarious sustenance. Gradually seeing the strength obtained by those
 who fed exclusively upon a grain diet,
 man, with his intelligence increasing,
 began to care for the patches where the desirable plants grew, and from this it was not a far step to the careful cul tivation of grain.
 Each family of the Jews had a mill for itself, differing in this from it's con temporaneous races, where the grain was ground in a community mill. So important was the millstone in the economy of the Jewish home that Moses laid down the law, "No man shall take the neither or the upper mill stone to pledge; for he taketh a mans life to pledge" This, the phrase "to pledge" would indicate that the pawn shop was not unknown at even this early stage of the worlds career.