SABAGOLLA WHEAT. 11 



dry. The housetops, courtyards, narrow streets, ;m<l hillsides are 

 covered with thousands of reed poles bending under the weight of 

 yellow macaroni, and scattered over the ground on mats lie different 

 sorts of short-shaped pastas. 



The process of manufacture seems exceedingly simple, but there may. 

 for all that, be secrets of the trade. As described in general by the 

 manager of a large mill in Torre Annunziata the mode followed by the 

 steam factories is as follows: 



The durum wheat is ground into semola and sieved to remove the 

 starchy part of the grains and leave the clear, light amber, or glutinous 

 part. Three or four grades of quality are made, and these depend on 

 the size of the sieve meshes. 



The semola is put into a special iron mixer, shaped like an old- 

 Eashioned artillery mortar, except thai it is square instead of cylindrical, 

 and furnished in the bottom with special screw-shaped fans with which 

 to stir the paste or dough. Boiling water is added to the semola and 

 the dough i- mixed for about seven minutes. The mass is then put 

 on a flat, circular kneading board and kneaded by two sharp-edged 

 parallel beams, which rise and fall as the table turns and press into the 

 dough as they descend. A few minutes of kneading are sufficient and 

 the homogeneous dough is then put into the cylinder and the piston 

 descends upon the mass, forcing it in strings slowly through the per- 

 forated plate at the bottom. Fifteen minutes are required to convert 

 the gallons of dough into thousands of feet of yellow macaroni. The 

 yellow color is produced by the use of saffron, of which powder a very 

 small quantity is put into each batch of dough. 



As soon as the strings of fresh paste which issue continually from 

 the die are of the proper length they are cut and thrown over a reed 

 pole and carried into the sunlight, if the weather is fair, or into 

 sheltered terraces, protected by curtains from the rain, if the weather 

 is unfavorable. On bright days the strings of macaroni are exposed 

 to the sunlight only two hours. They must be dried out only slightly 

 before being cellared for the night in dungeon-like underground 

 vaults similar to the Bavarian beer cellars. 



For twelve hours or more the poles of macaroni are kept in these 

 damp places, until the dough has become moist and pliable again and 

 the strings have lost the brittleness that the exposure to the sunlight 

 has given them. From the cellars the poles are carried to shaded 

 storehouses, open on all sides to the air but not lighted from above. 

 Here, in great masses of millions of strings, they hang for several 

 days — f r om eight to twenty being required, depending upon the dry- 

 ness of the atmosphere. According to the statements of the manager 

 of a factory this process of drying is necessary to give to the brittle 

 paste a horn like toughness and fit it to withstand the rough handling 

 to which it will be subjected without breaking into small pieces. 



