Wheat, the most important item of the well-to-do peasants’ food, has been spoken of elsewhere. It offers a scheme for classification in welfare. Those on the level of wheat bread and those below that level in life form very readily distinguishable classes. Bread made of barley or of millet is used by the poorest people. The flour used for most of the wheat bread is of graham quality. A lump of dough is saved from the mixture for the next batch. This leaven[85] goes by the name _khamîreh_. After the early morning grindings the dough is mixed in a wooden bowl, the woman generally sitting outside her door on the ground. When the dough has been mixed the bowl is covered with a straw mat called the _ṣînîyeh_. When ready for baking, the whole, surmounted by a tiny little basket, _ḳuba‛_, filled with dry flour for the hands when the loaves are formed, is carried on the woman’s head to the nearest oven. One oven is shared by several neighboring families. The oven is within a stone hut, or cabin, not much unlike the _sḳîfeh_, or loose stone house, mentioned elsewhere. The woman may have to wait her turn at the oven, as other women may be baking before her. She sits at one side and chats with the women and girls about her as she plies her needlework, sewing or embroidery. Being at work and unobserved, she generally has her head-shawl thrown one side. The oven is a domed pit. Inside the pit are little stones on which the cakes of bread are baked. The clay dome has a cover which may shut the baking bread within. The fire of grass[86], refuse from the olive presses, twigs or caked dung, is built outside the dome, and therefore does not come in contact with the interior when the oven is heated for baking. The cakes of bread are from a quarter to a half-inch thick and of the shape and size of a medium dessert plate. The hot stones give a hubbly surface to the loaves, and as the dough is not very stiff a delicious warm, spongy, graham bread results. The bread baked for sale in the shops is generally made of lighter flour and the loaves are smaller and sometimes thicker. ----- ----- In buying wheat for _burghul_ we sought the best grade of white wheat, paying three piasters a ruṭl for it, that is, about eleven cents for six and a quarter pounds. Burghul is prepared as a winter food. The wheat, after cleansing, is boiled until it is partly cooked. It is spread in the sun and dried and finally crushed in the hand-mill to the required fineness. The favorite size is about like broken rice. The chaff-like refuse is then blown off and, after another cleansing, the burghul is ready for a winter supply. Crushed wheat, called _jerîsheh_, may be prepared and used as a breakfast cereal would be with us. _Smîd_ is the name given to the unground portions of wheat, called with us semolina, separated from the flour by the bolting-machine of a modern mill.