School: Meelick (C.)

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1. Bread

   

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   In olden times bread was made from home-grown wheat. This wheat was threshed by hand flails and when it was left to dry for some time it was ground between two large stones called a quern. All corn had to be ground at home in those early times.
   Indian meal, which is a foreign corn was sometimes mixed with the wheaten flour for bread but it had to be of a finer type than the kind which the old people used for porridge. Potatoes were often used to mix with flour for cake making, one particular kind was called stampey cake and this was baked before the fire on turf ashes. Other cakes were griddle, bastable and flat cakes.
   Every home had a griddle for baking. It was a flat, circular piece of steel about twenty inches in diameter with two ears at equal distance apart by which it was hung on the crane with a special pot hanger of its own. Bread baked in this way was cut in quarters to make it easy to turn upside

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   Transcribed by a member of our volunteer transcription project.

   History Edit

   Topics

   1. products
      1. food products (~3,601)
         1. bread (~2,063)

   Language

   English

   Informant

   Mrs T. Sherlock

   Gender

   Female

   Age

   40

   Address

   Knockalisheen, Co. Clare