Flour is a finely ground powder prepared from grain or other starchy plant foods and used in baking. The vast majority is made from wheat. Flour has been made since prehistoric times. The earliest methods used for producing flour all involved grinding grain between stones. These methods included the mortar and pestle (a stone club striking grain held in a stone bowl), the saddle stone (a cylindrical stone rolling against grain held in a stone bowl), and the quern (a horizontal, disk-shaped stone spinning on top of grain held on another horizontal stone). These devices were all operated by hand.
The first mill in the North American colonies appeared in Boston in 1632 and was powered by wind. Later mills in the region used water.
Raw Materials
Although most flour is made from wheat, it can also be made from other starchy plant foods. These include barley, buckwheat, corn, lima beans, oats, peanuts, potatoes, soybeans, rice, and rye. Many varieties of wheat exist for use in making flour. In general, wheat is either hard (containing 11-18% protein) or soft (containing 8-11% protein). Flour intended to be used to bake bread is made from hard wheat. It also intended to be used to bake cakes and pastry is made from soft wheat. All-purpose flour is made from a blend of soft and hard wheat. Durum wheat is a special variety of hard wheat, which is used to make a kind of flour called Semolina. Semolina is most often used to make pasta. Flour usually contains a small amount of additives.
Manufacturing Process
- Wheat is received at the flour mill and inspected. Samples of wheat are taken for physical and chemical analysis. The wheat is stored in silos with wheat of the same grade until needed for milling.
- Before wheat can be ground into flour it must be free of foreign matter. This requires several different cleaning processes. At each step of purification the wheat is inspected and purified again if necessary.
- The first device used to purify wheat is known as a separator. This machine passes the wheat over a series of metal screens. The wheat and other small particles pass through the screen while large objects such as sticks and rocks are removed.
- The wheat next passes through an aspirator. This device works like a vacuum cleaner. The aspirator sucks up foreign matter which is lighter than the wheat and removes it.
- Other foreign objects are removed in various ways. One device, known as a disk separator, moves the wheat over a series of disks with indentations that collect objects the size of a grain of wheat. Smaller or larger objects pass over the disks and are removed.
- Another device, known as a spiral seed separator, makes use of the fact that wheat grains are oval while most other plant seeds are round. The wheat moves down a rapidly spinning cylinder. The oval wheat grains tend to move toward the center of the cylinder while the round seeds tend to move to the sides of the cylinder, where they are removed.
- Other methods used to purify wheat include magnets to remove small pieces of metal, scourers to scrape off dirt and hair, and electronic color sorting machines to remove material which is not the same color as wheat.
- The purified wheat is washed in warm water and placed in a centrifuge to be spun dry. During this process any remaining foreign matter is washed away.
- The moisture content of the wheat must now be controlled to allow the outer layer of bran to be removed efficiently during grinding. This process is known as conditioning or tempering. Several methods exist of controlling the amount of water present within each grain of wheat. Usually this involves adding, rather than removing, moisture.
- Cold conditioning involves soaking the wheat in cold water for one to three days. Warm conditioning involves soaking the wheat in water at a temperature of 46°C for 60-90 minutes and letting it rest for one day. If conditioning results in too much moisture, or if the wheat happens to be too moist after purification, water can be removed by vacuum dryers.
- Wheat of different grades and moistures is blended together to obtain a batch of wheat with the characteristics necessary to make the kind of flour being manufactured. At this point, the wheat may be processed in an Entoleter, a trade name for a device with rapidly spinning disks which hurl the grains of wheat against small metal pins. Those grains which crack are considered to be unsuitable for grinding and are removed.
- The wheat moves between two large metal rollers known as breaker rolls. These rollers are of two different sizes and move at different speeds. They also contain spiral grooves which crack open the grains of wheat and begin to separate the interior of the wheat from the outer layer of bran. The product of the breaker rolls passes through metal sieves to separate it into three categories. The finest material resembles coarse flour and is known as middlings or farina. Larger pieces of the interior are known as semolina. The third category consists of pieces of the interior which are still attached to the bran. The middlings move to the middlings purifier and the other materials move to another pair of breaker rolls. About four or five pairs of breaker rolls are needed to produce the necessary amount of middlings.
- The middlings purifier moves the middlings over a vibrating screen. Air is blown up through the screen to remove the lighter pieces of bran which are mixed with the middlings. The middlings pass through the screen to be more finely ground.
- Middlings are ground into flour by pairs of large, smooth metal rollers. Each time the flour is ground it passes through sieves to separate it into flours of different fineness. These sieves are made of metal wire when the flour is coarse, but are made of nylon or silk when the flour is fine. By sifting, separating, and regrinding the flour, several different grades of flour are produced at the same time. These are combined as needed to produce the desired final product.
- Small amounts of bleaching agents and oxidizing agents are usually added to the flour after milling. Vitamins and minerals are added as required by law to produce enriched flour. Leavening agents and salt are added to produce self-rising flour. The flour is matured for one or two months.
- The flour is packed into cloth bags which hold about 0.9, 2.3, 4.5, 11.3, 22.7 or 45.4 kg. For large-scale consumers, it may be packed in metal tote bins which hold 1361 kg, truck bins which hold 20,412 kg or railroad bins which hold 45,360 kg.
Byproducts/Waste
A kernel of wheat consists of three parts, two of which can be considered byproducts of the milling process. The bran is the outer covering of the kernel and is high in fiber. The germ is the innermost portion of the kernel and is high in fat. The endosperm makes up the bulk of the kernel and is high in proteins and carbohydrates. Whole wheat flour uses all parts of the kernel, but white flour uses only the endosperm.
Bran removed during milling is often added to breakfast cereals and baked goods as a source of fiber. It is also widely used in animal feeds. Wheat germ removed during milling is often used as a food supplement or as a source of edible vegetable oil. Like bran, it is also used in animal feeds.
Author: Syed Mudabbar Hussain Shah
The Author is final year student of B.Sc (Hons.) in Food Engineering, Department of Food Engineering
University of Agriculture, Faisalabad
Email:[email protected]
