We like to eat delicious snacks such as pasta, bread, cakes, etc. The main ingredient in all these dishes is flour. It is a finely ground powder made from grains or starchy food plants that is mainly used in baking. Although flour can be obtained from a variety of plants, most is made from wheat. Wheat flour dough is good for making bread because it contains a large amount of gluten, a substance that contains strong, elastic proteins.
Now the question is how to get the flour. How is it produced on such a large scale?
Farmers grow wheat, but to turn it into flour, it is sent to modern factories or mills. The largest wheat flour mill in America is the North Dakota Mill and Elevator Association in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The complex can produce 2,474 tons of finished products per day and store 5 million bushels. But China has produced more than 2.6 billion wheat over the past twenty years and is now the world’s largest wheat producer.
When the wheat reaches its destination, i.e. the mills, the process begins.
The first step is to decide what kind of flour will be made, as the type, quality and protein content of the wheat determine the category of flour. For example, white bread flour has a high protein content and a coarse texture, muffin flour has a low protein content and a soft texture, and all-purpose flour, which we use for everything, has a medium protein content. That’s why quality tests help us choose the right kind of wheat before processing.
Secondly, the wheat is cleaned and all unnecessary materials such as husks are removed. Then it is sent to milling machines with subsequent weight measurement, where it is crushed by steel rollers and passed through a sieve.
If the grains are too large and cannot pass through the sieve, they are transferred to another mill. However, if some grains remain unprocessed, they are vacuumed and sent back to the milling machines, and the cycle repeats.
The mills grind the endosperm, the soft inner part of the wheat kernel, to make flour. To do this, the bran is removed from the hard hull of the kernel and the seeds are beaten. This process takes place as soon as the wheat kernels enter the first mill and the endosperm turns to dust.
In parallel, an air cleaner is used between each grinding station to remove residue, lifting the light bran above the crushed endosperm. The flour is then milled, sieved and cleaned until it is free of foreign matter.
After all the checks, the flour is ready for packaging and transported to the market to prepare your favorite dishes.