[Sca-cooks] Grain mill question

[david friedman]

James P. wrote:

>Have a bit of an odd question but here goes.  I have a friend who's 
>planning to bake all of her own bread the odd thing is she also 
>want's to grind her own grain.  The part that isn't, in my opinion, 
>reasonable she whants to do it with a hand quern.
>
>She's asked me to help but I don't even know if anyone even makes 
>them anymore.  So anyone have any info that I could use?

Someone in Aethelmark (Mistress Judith of Kirtland, maybe?) about 15 
years ago wanted to experiment with grinding grain and made a 
concrete hand grinder. It consisted of a block with a cylindrical 
hole, by my memory about 8 inches across and maybe 6 or 8 inches 
deep, and a cylinder to fit in that hole with a wooden handle set 
into it off center, maybe 1 1/2 inch from the edge. You put the grain 
in the hole, put the cylinder on top, and used the handle to go round 
and round until you had flour. I seem to remember that she used 
relays of squires (her lord's? or a friend's?) to do a lot of the 
work. I have a vague memory she had some system of sieves for bolting 
the flour, but I don't remember the details--and it was long enough 
ago that my visual memory of the grinder may be off. I think it 
produced perfectly good flour, but was a lot of work.

Elizabeth of Dendermonde/Betty Cook