It’s the shear bloody work of it (sic). Grinding
Following on the previous post, the point is that banging, hitting, pounding, percussion does not produce flour out of grains (grape skins, chestnuts, bracken I shall leave for another post, but thanks commentators all, here and on facebook). Grains are my subject because they are the key to the history of civilization.
So although as we shall see later pounding was terribly important in the early days of flour making, it’s doesn’t in and of itself produce flour. You can bang away on wheat grains for as long as you like and you won’t end up with flour.
Oh no, those grains are hard, hard, hard.
To turn wheat into flour, what you have to do is shear (hence the pun in the title of this post). That is you have to have a weight and push, vertical and a lateral force (remember force vectors from school science days). Vertical force alone won’t do it.
Where does this weight and push come from? Well from the weight and push of the grinder. In the photo above, Emilia is grinding pineapple (a breeze) not grain. But the forces are the same. Look at her poised over the grindstone. She’s in the middle of the stroke and her full weight is still over the mano (muller, or whatever you care to call the upper stone). And she is moving it forward with all her force.
It’s this shearing force and only this shearing force that could break down grains into flour in the early history of the human race.
Now a few figures to focus on. Once humans went to a grain diet (a process that happened between 20,000 and 10,000 BC), they moved to needing about two pounds of grain a day. Think about that for a second. Almost half of the five pound bag of flour in the grocery store for every person every day.
Any idea how long it takes to grind 2 lbs of flour on a simple grindstone like the one above? Well (and understand these are rough estimates). About an hour.
So assume a household of three adults and two children. That’s about four hours grinding. Just grinding.
And, well to say grinding is gruelling hardly begins to tell it. I can grind for perhaps five or ten minutes. I end up sweaty, dizzy, and exhausted. Four hours?
No wonder that in ancient societies grinding was assigned to slaves and convicts.
Even then, a quick calculation. If it takes an hour to grind flour for every person every day, if about four or five hours is the most anyone can grind, then you have to put one in four or five working adults on to grinding.
One fifth of the population grinding? Well, I may have my figures off but I am prepared to bet that they are in the right range. Early civilizations then depended on (and were limited by) the work force required to grind. The weight of civilisation was quite literally on or rather under their shoulders.
Next. The cost to the grinder.
Replying to one commentator, Matt, you can also whir grains in a blender til the motor burns out and you won’t get flour. And here’s Judith Klinger’s account of her attempt to grind grape skins.
Don’t forget the pounding of other grains in Africa and all the songs women sing to while away the time. Have you run across data on the number of calories burned in this grain processing? Remember Richard Wrangham talking about how much time the apes spent chewing their food and how cooking relieved them eventually of that onerous task? Seems like the grinding is akin to that kind of chewing.
I was sure that I had seen grain being pounded, not ground in various contexts. It seems that this doesn’t produce flour, but is a way of cracking the grain so that it can be made into beer or gruel.
http://www.culinaryanthropologist.org/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&tag=millet&limit=20
Grinding stones can be used for whole range of food processing, not just flour. Since you can get beer or gruel (Roman staple of emmer wheat gruel was “puls” or pulmentum, which ended up as polenta) without grinding, who did bread and grinding develop? What is the advantage over gruel?
I can see how in an sifting pounded grain would yield a flour and due to the effort involved would produce some high status flat breads or griddle cakes, but how do you go from this to grinding flour as a staple activity world wide? And why is there a lot of maize grinding in Mexico, but no pounding to produce a corn gruel?
Regarding Greece, it’s puzzling why time consuming and laborious saddle- quern remained in use until the end of Classical antiqutiy while hopper mill had made its appearance already in Archaic period. Did people get on pretty well with saddle- quern?
Was roasting grains, before they have hardened, an effective way to make them easier to grind? Roasted grains have been preserved in archaeobotanical Prehistoric samples. Moreover, the method worked so well for barley that every Athenian bride was required by a law of Solon (early 6th B.C.) to take to her new house a phrygetron, a barley roaster.
I use a hand mill grinder. It’s the junior mill deluxe. It is built well with a choice of stone or steel heads. It’s still quite the workout grinding the grains, but well worth the effort no matter which way you choose to grind. The stone heads will grind the wheat berries and non oily grains. The steel heads will grind the oily grains and even make nut butters without adding any extra ingredients.
I am fairly new to grinding my own grains. When I decided to start milling my own flour vs using store bought, I was absolutely amazed how processed buying flour was. Not only do you benefit from the nutrition, but the taste of freshly milled flour is outstanding. I use the grains whole for cooking in a variety of ways as well.
I need to get one of these, Nicole, though it still will not help with wet grinding. What brand are you using?