No other American rolling pin can even come close to ‘sugar coating’ Jacob Bromwell’s very own Homestead Rolling Pin as it simply doesn’t exist! Invented by Bromwell at the turn of the 19th century, his rolling pins were especially made for appreciative folks like you when life beckoned for baking mouth-watering, moist, marvelous meals and munchies. His rolling pin is still made today on the machinery first used back ‘in days of lore’. Imagine the delicious smell of your favorite recipe smoothed out for combining the necessary ingredients for baking. Know that our one-of-a-kind Homestead Rolling Pin is an old fashioned, yet simple, useful treasure for preparing any mouth-watering breads and pastries your family, neighbors, and friends as well as coworkers will love whether in your kitchen or campgrounds. We know you will enjoy our Homestead Rolling Pin the same way as did those from nearly 200 years ago did…always ready to ‘roll’ with an old fashioned meal that began with the same stylish rolling pin used almost 200 years ago!
To further appreciate our very special dough roller, we believe the more you understand the history of rolling pins, the more you will see what Jacob Bromwell was set out to accomplish for his fellow American people as we continued to become an independent nation. So, here’s our story for you history buffs and collectors out there…
The first civilization known to have used the rolling pin was the Etruscans. These people may have migrated from Asia Minor to Northern Italy or may have originated in Italy. They established a group of city states (called Etruria) and were a dominant society by about the ninth century B.C., but their civilization was cut short after attacks from the Greeks, the growing Roman Empire, and the Gauls (tribes that lived in modern day France). The Etruscans' advanced farming ability, along with a tendency to cultivate many plants and animals never before used as food and turn them into great recipes, were passed to invading Greeks, Romans, and Western Europeans. Thanks to the Etruscans, these cultures are associated with gourmet cooking.
To prepare their inventive foods, the Etruscans also developed a wide range of cooking tools, including the rolling pin. Although written recipes did not exist until the fourth century B.C., the Etruscans wrote about their love of food and its preparation in murals, on vases, and on the walls of their tombs. Cooking wares are displayed with pride; rolling pins appear to have been used first to thin-roll pasta that was shaped with cutting wheels. They also used rolling pins to make bread (which they called puls) from the large number of grains they grew.
Natives of the Americas used more primitive bread-making tools that are favored and unchanged in many villages. Chefs who try to use methods to preserve recipes are also interested in both materials and tools. Hands are used as "rolling pins" for flattening dough against a surface, but also for tossing soft dough between the cook's two hands until it enlarges and thins by handling and gravity. Tortillas are probably the most familiar bread made this way.
Over the centuries, rolling pins have been made of many different materials, including long cylinders of baked clay, smooth branches with the bark removed, and glass bottles. As the development of breads and pastries spread from Southern to Western and Northern Europe, wood from local forests was cut and finished for use as rolling pins. The French perfected the solid hardwood pin with tapered ends to roll pastry that is thick in the middle; its weight makes rolling easier. The French also use marble rolling pins for buttery dough worked on a marble slab.
Glass is still popular; in Italy, full wine bottles that have been chilled make ideal rolling pins because they are heavy and cool the dough. Countries known for their ceramics make porcelain rolling pins with beautiful decorations painted on the rolling surface; their hollow centers can be filled with cold water (the same principle as the wine bottle), and cork or plastic stoppers cap the ends.
Wood has always been the material preferred by cooks and craftsmen in the United States. Pine was probably the wood of choice from colonization to the mid-1800s, but the pine forests in the northern states were already being depleted by this time. Rolling pin manufacturers started using other hardwoods like cherry and maple for their wooden kitchenware, which also included ladles and butter molds. Late in the nineteenth century, J. W. Reed invented the rolling pin with handles connected to a center rod; this is similar to the tool we know today, and it prevents cooks from putting their hands on the rolling surface while shaping pastry. Reed invented new versions of the dough kneader and dough roller; his contributions are notable, not only because he eased the cook's tasks, but also because Reed was one of many African-Americans who developed and patented improvements to household items.
