Flour is a bit unfair. Along with sugar, it suffers from the stigma of being the worst food ingredient for health. Because it is a fine, white powder, it tends to be passed over as sugar and wholesale money. However, the original flour was not that white or fine. Just as rice can be divided into brown rice and white rice depending on the degree of polishing, flour can be reborn as a light-white powder depending on milling. In fact, mankind has been eating flour that is neither white nor fine for much longer than white and fine flour.
Even in terms of nutrition, we are disparaging wheat flour. It is considered a representative of ‘refined carbohydrates’, but as long as it is not white, it is also rich in nutrients. That’s right, originally flour was not white and was a food ingredient rich in nutrients. However, in less than 200 years, the identity has changed 180 degrees. The reality is that carbohydrates are considered the leader in causing weight gain or weight gain. How did flour end up in this situation? The answer lies in history.
In order to eat flour, wheat must exist. And wheat has existed for a long time that is difficult for mankind to remember. It is estimated that humans ate wild wheat around 21,000 BC, when gathering and hunting were commonplace. Remains guarantee that cultivation was also practiced at least around 8,500 BC.
Unlike rice, wheat is easier to eat when the grains are ground into powder and kneaded. This means that it must go through milling to become a more appetizing food ingredient. The core of milling has not changed much for nearly 5,000 years. Wheat grains largely consist of bran, endosperm, and buds. Among these, the bran contains fiber, and the eyes contain nutrients such as protein, folic acid, and B vitamins.
The body, or endosperm, which has the largest proportion of wheat, is responsible for supplying nutrients to the eyes, and most of it is carbohydrates. Therefore, when you eat wheat, you consume the most carbohydrates from the endosperm. In a time when technology was not sufficiently developed, humans had plenty of opportunity to eat bran and snow. Taking Egypt in 3,000 BC as an example, wheat grains were ground with a mortar and pestle to separate the bran and endosperm, and then ground into powder with a crescent-shaped millstone.
Afterwards, the millstone developed into the method we know of of rotating two round stone plates facing each other. In this way, the method of crushing and milling grain rather than grinding it with stones has not changed for almost 5,000 years. Then, in the late 19th century, a full-fledged change occurred. The key was, of course, bran and snow. Flour containing these two ingredients was rough, but the dough did not rise abundantly even after fermentation due to interference with enzymes.
As a result, humans, who had to eat dark, coarse bread, continued to try to exclude bran and snow from flour. In medieval England, the process of separating the bran from the bran was done by passing flour through a sieve and cloth, but because it required a lot of manpower, white flour became the exclusive preserve of the upper class. A system was established in which nobles ate white, soft bread, and commoners ate dark, coarse bread.
However, the flour that separated the bran스포츠토토 from the buds was not as white or fine as it is today. Not only was there a limit to physical separation at the time, but when the buds were milled together, oil containing beta-carotene came out and colored the flour yellow. Flour soaked in bran oil quickly became rancid, making long-term storage and distribution difficult. The first attempt to overcome these shortcomings was made in Hungary. A mill was developed in which millstones of different sizes were stacked vertically.The mill, first developed in Hungary but known in the United States as the French style, laid the foundation for industrial flour milling. However, I could not shake off my inherent limitations. The millstone itself was the problem. Stone could not avoid the fate of eventually breaking during the long milling process, so a replacement material was needed. Pottery appeared briefly, but the age of iron soon arrived. Flour mills equipped with iron rollers appeared in Europe and were soon introduced to the United States, ushering in the heyday of flour.
The foundations of industrial flour, and more broadly carbohydrates, as we know them today were established in the United States after the 1870s. The north-central state of Minnesota, along with the neighboring states of North Dakota and South Dakota, has traditionally been a major wheat producer. Thanks to this, many companies were able to launch, Cargill being a representative example. Cargill, which holds a dominant position in grain distribution, was founded in 1865 by William Cargill in eastern Minnesota as a wheat warehouse business and has grown into a multinational company. For them, the wheat business was another ‘gold rush’.
Minnesota also had enormous energy potential. The Mississippi River, which divides the American continent vertically, formed St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Since water with a difference is ultimately potential energy, several businessmen from eastern New England began to see the potential of Minneapolis. And I drew the equation ‘wheat + energy = milling’ in my head.