Two questions

[ewx]

1) What is the best thing since sliced bread (which apparently dates back to 1928)?

2) What was the best thing before sliced bread?

Comments

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

pay a significant proportion of their earnings (or rather, their labour and barterable produce) to have their grain ground by a miller.

One option was for the miller to take a proportion of the flour in return for his work and equipment. (a.k.a 'multure', which appears to have been somewhere about a sixteenth part of the grain (http://books.google.com/books?id=MQNfrRFmvw4C&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=%22a+sixteenth+part%22+multure&source=bl&ots=S-ffTN15AH&sig=hX2GLWrT-6CQgXJ0dNPbXk9FjWc&hl=en&ei=qu_2Sbu_GtSw-AbJ3MCdDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1).)

(As it happens, my parents bought a water mill in the mid 1960s, but converted it to living accommodation. The building was last a commercial enterprise under the previous owners. I mention this purely for colour, and not as any indication of expertise on my part.)