Category: Milling Flour

The 1086 English Domesday Book records 6000 mills, mostly water mills. Water mill technology exploded after the end of the Western Roman Empire. By 1000, European rivers and streams were driving tens of thousands of mills to produce the flour that made Europe the global power that it became. I am very excited to announce … Continue reading Thursday, August 20, 2020 Seminar: Milling from The Ancient World world to the Early 19th Century

Stone milling is the art of grinding grain into a meal, and then through sifting and re-grinding (and re-sifting), refining the product into the quality flour one wants for the finished product. While sifting determines the final quality of flour, the ratios of what is produced (and thus profit) depends heavily on the precision with which … Continue reading The Miller’s Thumb

This is an eighteenth-century print of a flour mill floating on the Seine with Notre Dame in the background. Until well into the nineteenth century mills were attached  bridges that crossed the Seine and smaller mills, like the one in this print, were actually small boats, or barges, attached to shore or anchored in the … Continue reading Flour Mills on the Seine, Paris