Chapter 639： Bread is life

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The preparation time for the expedition army was very short, and the soldiers took the money and bought them at the bazaar in Roseburg.

They flocked to the blacksmith's stalls to buy new mass-produced hand axes and spearheads to add weapons, and make the women in the family do their best to make dry food.

In the morning market, a magical stall attracted hundreds of people to watch.

It was a booth composed of more than a dozen simple patchwork wooden tables, all of which were covered with grey coarse cloth.

It does not hurt that there are a large number of disc-shaped objects, its yellow and white color and the diffuse aroma of wheat, which fully prove the essence of its sesame seeds!

Several women wearing coarse cloth turbans yelled: "Four pounds of cereal for a silver coin."

They kept yelling, but the price of this pancake is really expensive.

The men poked their heads and watched, whispering to each other.

Finally someone who really coveted stepped forward, took out the silver coin and yelled: "Five silver coins, I want twenty pounds!"

"Okay!" The woman happily got the money, and she ordered her buddy to take a balance and weigh the bread immediately.

The young soldier did not worry about the accuracy of the scales at the stall. He had a big appetite and naturally had to eat more. It is not appropriate to expect future expeditions to rely on the food provided by the duke, so he needs to reserve some ready-to-eat food. Pack in your backpack for emergency needs.

Compared with the pasta made of pure oatmeal, it cannot be made bigger than a palm. Oatmeal cake lacks stickiness, and the cake that is kneaded and baked after being ground into powder is very fragile.

But this wheat cake is obviously as big as three slaps side by side. Is such a big cake still tough in your hand?

The soldier took a bite in full view.

Is that a bite? It is clearly a bite, like tearing meat from a deer leg bone.

The soldier feasted in public, his eyes widened like brass bells. He was eager to say something. After swallowing hard, he hurriedly yelled: "Sweet! This pancake is so sweet!"

sweet? People looked at each other, driven by curiosity to give out money.

This wheat cake stall belongs to Aslaqi’s mill. The slightly crude mill was completed twenty days ago. Since it was completed, the processing of grain began, as for how to grind the noodles is really a secret.

Aslaqi herself is not here, but fortunately, she is very clever to show off her husband Arik's banner at the very right time.

She is Arik's little wife, a Gotland woman. The men onlookers all knew this. They wanted to come to the mill of Captain Qi's wife. It is necessary to join in. Now the brothers have tasted a kind of delicacy. How can they not take the money to buy the flatbread?

The granola prepared by Asraki is selling quickly, and all of this is within her estimation.

Now, she herself was staying in her own mill, subject to Rurik's inspection.

The three granite slabs were polished to be very flat, and they stood on the stone piers and looked very generous.

Large holes were drilled into the stone slabs, and a hard iron rod was inserted in it.

Rurik saw two stone wheels made of granite on the stone slabs and pillars in front of him, and an oak shaft was inserted into the metal hole in the center. This oak shaft has also been reworked, that is, it is covered with a layer of bronze skin, and the center hole of the stone wheel is also the same, thus forming a hard-contact bearing, which is lubricated by seal grease.

This set of wheel axle system is like a wheel standing on a stone slab. The specially treated oak axle is a car shaft. It is fixed by a bronze component, protruding a bronze collar, and is sleeved on the raised iron rod on the stone slab.

Rurik was surprised to see it, and Aslaqi's interesting explanation was in his ears.

After receiving the Duke’s task, how she chose stone materials, hired workers to process parts, hired workers, and how much wheat she used in the Duke’s granary, and even how much she paid for it, told Rürik in quite detail.

"You... really finished! Better than I thought! These are stone mills, and the effect is no worse than the rotating millstones. It seems that I should take down the bronze millstones and give them all to you now."

Aslaqi was waiting for this praise, and said, "Since you have promised, please send me the golden millstone."

"Good Le! You can make three stone mills very quickly, and you can make more very quickly. I will give you all four bronze grinding discs."

"Actually, I only need one set." Aslaqi said softly, "I intend to use it as a memorial. As for the remaining three, it is obvious that more weapons or daily necessities can be made. My lord, We must safely win the new war. In my opinion, you can melt them and cast them into clusters of arrows."

"You..." Rurik stared into her eyes, first calm and embarrassed for a while, then he slowly smiled. "Okay, just by you. Haha, you also broke your new heart for the rejuvenation of your family! You just said something exciting to me. I like to hear it very much, and your actual deeds also touched me."

"Originally serving Ross." Asraki complimented immediately.

Rurik looked at these stone mills again. Aslaqi completed it based on the structure of the wheel and the cowl. In terms of structure, it is a little different from the Eastern stone mill. The efficiency of the use is obviously OK.

In addition to a few captured Northumbrian women who worked in her mill, there were also employed local women. She also bought reindeer as animal power to pull wooden poles.

Human and animal power alternately push the wooden poles to realize the crushing of the wheat by the stone wheel, especially the working women, who are instructed to perform their work in front of the duke.

Rurik saw that the oats and wheat were mixed together, and they were crushed over and over again by two stone wheels until they were crushed into powder.

The whole-wheat flour made from a mixture of these two kinds of wheat, as a miller, Aslaqico, will not waste even a pinch of wheat bran.

Rurik touched the whole wheat flour that had just been crushed, and asked: "You have processed a lot, so you should have made a lot of scones! I know, you opened the market and are selling it, since it was you personally. I don’t want to ask more about the baked wheat cakes I bought. I just want to know what the wheat I gave you to get from my warehouse has turned into. Is it a lot of wheat cakes?"

"It's bread, a lot of bread." Aslaqi was very anxious, and her eyebrows were about to fly, which clearly meant to show off some interesting baby.

"Is it in your warehouse? Take me there!"

After a while, a newly-built woodcarving frame standing on dozens of wooden stakes was what Asraki called a bread warehouse.

Lurik noticed that the waterproofing measures of this building were superior to other buildings, and look at its herringbone roof, on which stone tiles and terracotta were laid. "This woman is really willing to spend money on these things, Arik, you must give your beautiful little wife a lot of money."

Rurik’s speculation is completely correct. Asraki is a woman of beauty, wisdom and skills, and she is much better than the simple Novgorod village girl Peravina. He loves his little wife, and feels guilty when he thinks that her heirs cannot inherit his family property. Now giving her a huge sum of money is Arik's compensation, and he also hopes that the little wife can start a career.

Of course Arik knows better, now helping his little wife Asraki is actually helping his younger brother Rurik. More importantly, if the mill succeeds, it will be a great thing for all the Ross brothers.

The closed door of the warehouse was opened, and Aslaqi personally lit the oil lamp placed at the door.

Rurik's nose was held up, and what came to his face was a refreshing smell of pine resin, and the thick scent of wheat lurking in the breath.

Through the dim light, he saw that there were many wooden shelves in this long warehouse room, on which were actually...

"It's all big bread?! So big!"

He stepped forward and touched it casually, subconsciously yelling the word "hleba" in Slavic.

Aslaqi was taken aback: "You... actually said the same words as my sister (Peravina)."

Rurik ignored her for a while, and continued to stroke the dry bread in front of him with his hands.

Coincidentally, the Slavic tribes basically pronounced "hleba" for bread. The Viking forces basically pronounced the word "life" as libe.

Although the two ethnic groups that are of the same origin but have been separated for thousands of years have become language-incompatible, they reunited here in the Duchy of Ross.

Bread is life. Two words, almost one way to pronounce.

This is how real big Liba is, or traditional Middle-aged European bread is such a baking style. It is very huge, and it is deliberately baked like this! From Rurik's point of view, it was almost half a meter long, and when it was hugged, its weight was amazing.

In the dim light, Aslaqi smiled and watched Rurik playing with bread vigorously. She knew that her mission had been successfully completed, and the plan to capture the Duke of Rose would definitely succeed more than half of her plan for a better future.

"My lord, are you satisfied?"

Rurik still didn’t answer directly, and asked: “Tell me, what you use to bake bread, how to bake and how often you bake, and tell me all the work you have done during this time! Damn, the smell of these breads is really amazing. It makes people comfortable, just as hard as a rock."

The Duke was asking, and Aslaqi said this time.

It turned out that stone mills, mill buildings, large clay ovens, and long warehouse houses were built at the same time. She took the huge sum of money that Arik took out and easily recruited a group of relatively idle people in Roseburg to work for it.

Many local women in Ross drive people crazy just to take care of the new children in the family, but there are so many children in the family that they must find ways to make money to buy food and meat to make a living. Realistic reasons force them not to work far away, but even if they stay at home and work as tailors, their work is saturated. Hearing that Arik’s little wife got the Duke’s order to build a mill, she paid a good salary, and the sisters naturally came in.

The men and women made all this for Asraki, and the struggle of the Rose woman highlights great value.

It is unrealistic to expect women to do heavy physical work. They are arranged to first use traditional stone grinders to crush the dough to make flour, then mix wheat and oat flour with a little water and knead it into a large dough, and finally weigh it with a balance. Five pounds a piece of dough, waiting for the collective baking, in fact, this work is not easy at all, it is also too comfortable to be lumbered and transported.

The two large clay ovens placed in the wooden shed were successfully completed. The inside of the oven constitutes a low temperature and stuffy baking environment. Each oven can bake 20 doughs at the same time. Once the oven is completed, the baking work begins. At the beginning of the period, because the amount of flour processed by the traditional stone grinder was too small, the stove did not bake much bread at one time. With the completion of the three stone mills, the output of flour has skyrocketed. Recently, the oven has to be put into operation around the clock.

They are like clay ovens for baking naan. The loaves are naturally larger than sesame cakes. They also need to be fermented for a period of time before baking. It takes some time to bake the bread, but as long as the stove keeps running, it will be baked. The efficiency is still amazing.

The coarse flour is basically just rolled into a batch, then sent to the other side to be kneaded into dough and then weighed, placed in a wooden basin, and sent to the stove after natural fermentation.

This one-stop service is served by nearly fifty servants and helpers. Aslaqi can proudly say that her current task is to monitor everyone's work.

Two stoves can produce nearly 200 pounds of bread at a time. In theory, it can be baked all day long, and 25 stoves can be produced in one day.

Aslaqi's mill and baking furnace are still working at full capacity, and the inventory of this warehouse, Aslaqi, put it plainly-close to 30,000 pounds of bread.

Thirty thousand Roman pounds is not equivalent to a ton? It sounds like a huge number, but if it is spread evenly across a thousand soldiers, each person will get nothing more than one kilogram of bread.

what is this? Thousands of years later, the Soviet and German war rations on paper would have to eat nearly one kilogram of bread, biscuits and other grain products every day. Only in this way can they cope with a soldier’s daily consumption of four thousand calories.

Those are the cruelest war situations, and it is largely unknown whether the paper rationed food can be implemented.

Now it’s only the ninth century. Rurik doesn’t think that his fighters will have a chance of consuming four thousand kcal one day, and because of the special factors of this space-time war, the victory or defeat of a real war will be decided within a few days from one or two battles. .

Even so, the reserves of bread are still too small. Think about it again. This is just the result of the Asraki Mill, which has just opened for a month. It is just two ovens and three stone mills. If she can do better in time .

Compared to fine flour bread, a major drawback of whole-wheat bread is that it becomes too easy to dry, causing it to be as hard as wood. In other words, this is a great thing, because this kind of bread is naturally dehydrated and becomes an emergency food that is extremely storage-resistant. Looking at this dark and dry environment again, Rurik guessed that all of this was intentional by Asraki.

Just before eating these dry and hard wood breads, you obviously need to use a saw to cut them into slices. It is even possible to beat it into crumbs. After all, the bread and oatmeal will be absorbed by the body when it enters the stomach.

In this dark warehouse, Rurik announced directly: "All the bread ingredients are my wheat, and you are paying for the labor. Asraki, I will pay you according to the previous agreement. We are discussing Shang, I will give you money right away."

"Thank you." Asraki said cheerfully.

"No thanks, I am very confident in you now. It seems that you should build another mill in Shilla Fort. How about this long trip, let's go to Fort Ross together?"

"Okay, I meant it for a long time. Especially the construction of a new mill in Shilla Fort, where my father lives, was my desire, and it happened that I brought little Gustav there."

Rurik nodded: "Then prepare quickly. You can arrange for the work of the mill to continue. The production of excellent mills must not be stopped. I will also sell you extra food, and the army will give priority to buying the bread that will be made in the future. ."

"Yes!"

"Then go on. That's right." Rurik thought about the wheat cakes: "For those cakes, I just learned that you paid a very expensive price. Even if it is the wheat you bought yourself. Why is it so expensive?"

"Just right! I still need to sell it urgently." Aslaqi smiled, and arranged for someone to bring the warm cake to Rurik's hand.

This cake is baked on an iron plate There is a slightly charcoal pastry on the bottom layer.

Compared to bread that is as hard as a rock, this cake is indeed very soft. Sniffing the smell, he opened his mouth...

Rurik closed his eyes and chewed silently, then shuddered all over.

"Sweet! Did you put honey?"

"You found it. It's honey. I only put a little bit in each pancake." Aslaqi concealed her face and smiled: "In this way, you won't be surprised if I raise the price."

"Not surprising! It's great. I accepted this pancake. It seems that I will have to order you to make more honey-containing scones in the future. Brothers are fighting outside and eating delicious food is also the key to victory."

"Honey is hard to get," she said.

"It's okay. The people of Novgorod always pay tribute to honey. After the development of the beekeeping industry there, everything will be fine. I should leave." Rurik patted his clothes and held the honey pancake in his hand. "I Let’s take a look at the new slingshots and trebuchets made by carpenters. Those guys have to be worthy of the money I gave!"