The History of Bread From Pre-historic to Modern Times. Ashton John
for the widow: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands.’
There were no public mills at which flour could be ground, but, as now, in the unchangeable East, every family ground their own corn, and this task, as well as the making and baking of bread, was left to the women. See Matt. xxiv. 41: ‘Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.’ Again we find that it was a woman who was grinding corn on a housetop in Thebez who (Judges ix. 53) ‘cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and all to brake his skull.’ An Eastern flour mill consists of two stones, the upper one rotating on the lower. In Shaw’s Travels, p. 297, he says: ‘Most families grind their wheat and barley at home, having two portable millstones for that purpose. The uppermost is turned round by a small handle of wood or iron placed in the edge of it. When this stone is large, or expedition is required, then a second person is called in to assist. It is usual for the women alone to be concerned in this employ, setting themselves down over against each other, with the millstones between them.’
And Dr. Clarke, in his Travels,6 says, that at Nazareth: ‘Scarcely had we reached the apartment prepared for our reception, when, looking into the courtyard belonging to the house, we beheld two women grinding at the mill in a manner most forcibly illustrating the saying of our Saviour. They were preparing flour to make our bread, as it is always customary in the country when strangers arrive. The two women, seated upon the ground opposite to each other, held between them two round, flat stones, such as are seen in Lapland, and such as in Scotland are called querns. In the centre of the upper stone was a cavity for pouring in the corn, and by the side of this an upright wooden handle for moving the stone. As the operation began, one of the women with her right hand pushed this handle to the woman opposite, who again sent it to her companion, thus communicating a rotary and very rapid motion to the upper stone, their left hands being all the while employed in supplying fresh corn as fast as the bran and flour escaped from the sides of the machine.’
Of such importance among the household treasures of the Hebrews was the flour mill esteemed that Moses laid it down (Deut. xxiv. 6): ‘No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man’s life to pledge.’
The first mention of bread in the Bible, with the exception of Adam’s curse, is in Gen. xiv. 18: ‘And Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine’; but it is pre-supposed, in Chap. xii. 10: ‘And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.’ When the three angels visited him on the plains of Mamre, he offered them hospitality (Gen. xviii. 5, 6): ‘I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said. And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth.’ And to this day in Syria cakes are made upon the hearth, and the breaking of bread together is a token of amity and protection extended by the stronger to the weaker.
Of what shape the Hebrew bread was we do not know, for no representation of it has come down to us. As a rule it was possibly in the form of thin flat round cakes – similar to those unleavened biscuits now used by the Jews during their Passover, and the form and dimensions of which are probably traditional – but they also had loaves of bread, as we read in many places. The Shew, or Presence bread, must have been loaves, because of the quantity of flour in each – between five and six pints. The directions for making it, etc., are plain enough (Lev. xxiv. 5-9): ‘And thou shalt take fine flour, and bake twelve cakes thereof: two tenth deals shall be in one cake. And thou shalt set them in two rows, six on a row, upon the pure table before the Lord. And thou shalt put pure frankincense upon each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, even an offering made by fire unto the Lord. Every Sabbath he shall set it in order before the Lord continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting covenant. And it shall be Aaron’s and his sons’; and they shall eat it in the holy place: for it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the Lord made by fire by a perpetual statute.’
This shew bread must have been leavened, for a cake containing nearly three quarts of flour, and unleavened, could hardly be. We have no certainty as to the shape of these twelve loaves, typical of the tribes of Israel; for, although the gold table on which it was placed figures in a bas relief on the Arch of Titus at Rome, there is no bread upon it. The Rabbis say that the loaves were square, and covered with leaves of gold; and that they were placed in two piles of six each, one upon another, on the opposite ends of the table; and that between every two loaves were laid three semi-tubes, like slit canes, of gold, for the purpose of keeping the cakes the better from mouldiness and corruption by admitting the air between them; and it is also said, but upon what authority I know not, that each end of the table was furnished with a tall, three-pronged fork of gold, one at each corner, standing perpendicularly, for the purpose of keeping the loaves in their proper places.
The new bread was set on the table with much ceremony every Sabbath, and it was so ordered that the new bread should be set on one end of the table before the old was taken away from the other, in order that the table might not be for a moment without bread. Jewish tradition states that, to render the bread more peculiar and consecrated from its origin, the priests themselves performed all the operations of sowing, reaping and grinding the corn for the shew bread, as well as of kneading and baking the bread itself. On the table was, probably, some salt, as we read in Lev. ii. 13: ‘With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt.’
There seems to be little doubt but that the Israelites knew nothing about leavened bread until they went into Egypt, and that they obtained that knowledge from the civilised Egyptians. That they did leaven their bread we learn from Exodus xii. 34-39: ‘And the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading-troughs being bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders… And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was not leavened; because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry, neither had they prepared for themselves any victual.’
Bread was sometimes dipped in oil as a relish, and in this state it was also used in sacrifice. Lev. viii. 26: ‘And out of the basket of unleavened bread, that was before the Lord, he took one unleavened cake, and a cake of oiled bread, and one wafer,’ etc.; and, occasionally, as we see in Ruth, it was dipped in vinegar. The Jew thanked God for all His good gifts, and with his bread, he took it in his hands, and pronounced the following benediction: ‘Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, the King of the world, that produceth bread out of the earth.’ If there were many at table, one asked a blessing for the rest. The blessing always preceded the breaking of the bread. The rules concerning the breaking of bread were – the master of the house recited and finished the blessing, and after that he broke the bread; he did not break a small piece, lest he should seem to be sparing; nor a large piece, lest he should be thought to be famished; it was a principal command to break a whole loaf. He that broke the bread put a piece before everyone, and the other took it into his hand. The master of the family ate first of the bread after blessing. Maimonides, writing on Halacoth, or legal formulæ (Beracoth, c. 7), says the guests were not to eat or taste anything till he who broke had tasted first, nor was it permitted at festivals for any of the guests to drink of the cup till the master of the family had done so.
There are several unleavened bread bakeries in London, and one each in Birmingham and Leeds, to supply the Jews resident in the neighbourhood with Passover cakes, or Matzos. Of course, there is an enormous demand for this sort of unleavened bread, and to meet it these bakeries begin baking two months before the commencement of the Passover. These Matzos look like ordinary large water biscuits, except that they are a foot or more in diameter. They are made of flour and water, and contain no other ingredient.
After the flour has been kneaded into a very stiff dough, a lump of it, weighing about 50 lb., is placed on a great block of wood and pressed into a thick sheet by a heavy beam, which is fastened to the block at one end by an iron link and staple. This sheet is next placed under an iron roller, from which it emerges in a long ribbon. It passes under another roller, and another, and then it is thin enough for baking. It is now stamped and cut into the unbaked Matzos, which are placed upon a
Vol. IV., 167, 168.