20/09/2017
History of flour
It was discovered around 6000 BC that wheat seeds could be crushed between simple millstones to make flour.
Even before the wheel was invented, a revolutionary technology had been discovered: the production of flour. The realization that indigestible seeds could be ground into nourishing dust steered the history and fate of man in a new direction. Without the invention of the grinding stone there would be no bread or buns, no pasta or pizza, no cakes or couscous. Probably there would be fewer people on our planet. Certainly there would be no civilization as we know it. And the wheel, originally an aid to agriculture, would presumably never have been invented.
Flour has become the daily food of millions. But we would be wrong to take it for granted. The cereal powder that feeds a large proportion of the world’s population is the result of thousands of years of development. The history of flour is one of brilliant innovation and growing prosperity, but also of famine and hardship. Cereals, flour and bread are inseparably bound up with human civilization: wherever enough could be harvested, ground and baked, the economy flourished and culture emerged.
Industrial mills now produce hundreds of different types of flour for every conceivable application, and in incredible quantities. Every year, 320 million tons of wheat flour for human consumption alone run off the milling rollers. Wheat milling, especially, has become a global industry that bears a great responsibility. For the plant that was cultivated by the pioneers of agriculture over 10,000 years ago is now the staple food of a third of the world’s population – a bulwark between us and hunger.
