DEFINE QUERN CRACKED

Grain is fed from a chute into a hole, known as the eye, in the centre of the runnerstone (Figure 1). There is a gap between the static bedstone and rotating runnerstone which is determined by the size of the grain. Perhaps counter-intuitively, millstones do not touch when in operation.

Modern flour mills that use rotating millstones are often driven by electric motors. With time, water or wind became the source of power to turn the millstone. Initially, these large stones would have been turned by animals or slaves. A great diversity of power sources have been used to drive the rotating action of the runnerstone. Much larger circular-shaped stones would be used in such mills and these produce a finer flour than that produced by hand held instruments. Powered mills would have provided this step forward and these were common by Roman times. Diagram to show the anatomy of a millstone.ДЄs the agricultural production of wheat grew and settled populations became larger there would have been the need for more efficient methods of flour production.

DEFINE QUERN CRACKED

In addition, they produce only enough ground or cracked grain for a household or extended family.ДЇigure 1. Obviously, such methods are both laborious and time intensive. An example of an early British quern is on display at the British Museum. However, they could be much heavier than the handstone used with saddle querns and so could be used with unmalted grain and produce a finer flour. Such rotary querns are hand-powered and as a consequence are limited in size and milling capacity by the strength of their operator. The grain enters the quern through a hole in the centre of the runnerstone and migrates to the edge as it is ground, emerging from between the stones as a coarsely ground flour.

These operate in a similar manner to modern millstones and consist of two circular stones, a rotating runnerstone overlying a static bedstone. More advanced cultures invented rotary querns. In order to make grinding easier, the grain was often malted Cereal grains, such as barley and wheat, that have been made to germinate by soaking in water and then have their germination halted by drying in hot air are refered to as malted. These hand stones were used to crush the grain and produced a rather coarse flour. The handstone would have been either a cylindrical piece of stone (held in both hands and drawn across the grain rather like a rolling pin) or a disc with a with a vertical handle on its back (rather like an upside-down mushroom) held in one hand. A saddle stone is a cradle-shaped piece of hard stone which holds the grain. The oldest known flour milling devices are saddle stones (see main image). Traditionally, and in some parts of the world to this day, this would have been accomplished by grinding the grain between two stones, a lower, stationary stone called the quern stone and an upper, mobile stone called the handstone. Milling is the process by which cereal grains are ground into flour.

Define quern