Flour
Many people do not realize the importance of flour to many of the foods we eat. It seems so common, and abundant. However, Flour is one of the most important ingredients in baking. Another thing many people do not realize is that there are many different types of flour. The difference between the types of flour is often that they are made from different parts of the kernel. To truly understand how flour is made you must first understand the wheat kernel and it's parts. There are three main parts of the wheat kernel, otherwise known as the wheat berry. The bran is the hard outer shell of the kernel that is used as protection from the weather and other elements of danger that it may encounter. The reason that bran is removed before the wheat it milled into flour it due to its sharp edges. These sharp edges would cut through the gluten and would result in bread that simply is not going to rise properly. However, the bran is an extremely good source of fiber and it contains the majority of the minerals that can be found in wheat, so it wouldn't be that bad of an idea of adding wheat bran in yourself to bread that doesn't rise or in other foods. Next comes the germ. This is the part of the plant that if it were t
The next flour to be talked about is patent flour. Although this is a variation it is not most important of the differentiations between the types of wheat. After learning what flour is made from, I think that the best place to go from there is how wheat becomes flour. Finally there is the long patent flour which is made up of quite a lot of straight flour, this flour ranges anywhere from ninety to ninety-five percent straight flour, and its extraction rate is anywhere from ninety to ninety-five percent as well. It has a protein content that is generally between seven and nine percent. It first started way back when with people using nothing more than a few stones to grind down the wheat into flour. While a softer kernel will produce flour which is lower in protein and will benefit from chemical leavening agents. The final grade of clear flour is second clear flour, which has an extremely high ash content and is also exceptionally dark. Extra short also called fancy as well as first patent flours are made from the soft wheat. From here there is the short patent flour. With this, the bottom stone which was to remain stationary, had grooves that would channel the ground flour out the sides of the stones, and the top stone would be either rubbed or turned against the bottom stone. Pastry flour is used to make many things such as pie doughs and other laminated doughs such as croissant or Danish. They were starting to be substituted with steel rollers, which were not only cheaper for the mills to use, but they also provided a more consistent and cleaner product. Straight flour is used mainly in the baking of breads because of its high gluten content. This caused the invention of the sieve, which was made out of woven grass that would filter out some of the coarser pieces of grain but it still was hell on the teeth.
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