The Millers' Work Is Exclusively The Province Of The Women.
There
are no circular hand-mills, as among Oriental nations; but the
corn is ground upon a simple flat
Stone, of either gneiss or
granite, about two feet in length by fourteen inches in width.
The face of this is roughened by beating with a sharp-pointed
piece of harder stone, such as quartz, or hornblende, and the
grain is reduced to flour by great labour and repeated grinding
or rubbing with a stone rolling-pin. The flour is mixed with
water and allowed to ferment; it is then made into thin pancakes
upon an earthenware flat portable hearth. This species of
leavened bread is known to the Arabs as the kisra. It is not very
palatable, but it is extremely well suited to Arab cookery, as it
can be rolled up like a pancake and dipped in the general dish of
meat and gravy very conveniently, in the absence of spoons and
forks. No man will condescend to grind the corn, and even the
Arab women have such an objection to this labour, that one of the
conditions of matrimony enforced upon the husband, if possible,
provides the wife with a slave woman to prepare the flour.
Hitherto we had a large stock of biscuits, but as our dragoman
Mahomet had, in a curious fit of amiability, dispensed them among
the camel-drivers, we were now reduced to the Arab kisras.
Although not as palatable as wheaten bread, the flour of dhurra
is exceedingly nourishing, containing, according to Professor
Johnston's analysis, eleven and a half per cent.
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