Noodle-making Frame

This is a tool used to press out noodles, and was also called bunteul. The dough was put into the noodle maker and then pressed with a pestle using leverage to produce noodles. As the skins of buckwheat, wheat or barley are hard and difficult to digest, they were ground into flour to be consumed in the form of noodles. This led noodles to become commercialized from its early history, and noodle shops were a somewhat common sight. Noodle houses used a noodle maker placed on top of a large iron caldron hung up above wood-burning stoves. A flour container made of cast iron or brass was fit under the hole in the middle of the noodle maker, and kneaded dough was put into the container. And then, when the end of the pressure bar was pressed, the principle of leverage would enter the thick, wooden noodle pestle into the container and the dough would be pressed through underneath the container. The container has a number of small holes through which thin noodles would be pressed out. The noodles would then fall underneath the noodle maker into the caldron then boiled.