Not to be confused with Flower. Please help improve it or discuss these issues buckwheat bread whole foods the talk page. This article’s lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. This article needs additional citations for verification.

Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. It has been suggested that Flour sack be merged into this article. Three different kinds of wheat and rye flour. These flours are basic ingredients for the cuisine of Central Africa. Flour is a powder made by grinding raw grains, roots, beans, nuts, or seeds. The CDC has cautioned not to eat raw flour doughs or batters.

Raw flour can contain bacteria like E. The English word flour is originally a variant of the word flower, and both words derive from the Old French fleur or flour, which had the literal meaning “blossom”, and a figurative meaning “the finest”. Corn flour has been important in Mesoamerican cuisine since ancient times and remains a staple in the Americas. Rye flour is a constituent of bread in central and northern Europe. An important problem of the industrial revolution was the preservation of flour. Transportation distances and a relatively slow distribution system collided with natural shelf life.

A Walz set of roller mills. Milling of flour is accomplished by grinding grain between stones or steel wheels. Today, “stone-ground” usually means that the grain has been ground in a mill in which a revolving stone wheel turns over a stationary stone wheel, vertically or horizontally with the grain in between. Modern farm equipment allows livestock farmers to do some or all of their own milling when it comes time to convert their own grain crops to coarse meal for livestock feed. This capability is economically important because the profit margins are often thin enough in commercial farming that saving expenses is vital to staying in business.

Flour contains a high proportion of starches, which are a subset of complex carbohydrates also known as polysaccharides. Refined” flour has had the germ and bran, containing much of the nutritional fibre and vitamins, removed and is often referred to as “white flour”. Bleached flour is artificially aged using a “bleaching” agent, a “maturing” agent, or both. A maturing agent may either strengthen or weaken gluten development. Potassium bromate, listed as an ingredient, is a maturing agent that strengthens gluten development. Benzoyl peroxide bleaches, but does not act as a maturing agent. It has no effect on gluten.

It is a maturing agent that strengthens gluten development, but does not bleach. Chlorine gas is used as both a bleaching agent and a maturing agent. It weakens gluten development and oxidizes starches, making it easier for the flour to absorb water and swell, resulting in thicker batters and stiffer doughs. Cake flour” in particular is nearly always chlorinated. Bromination of flour in the US has fallen out of favor, and while it is not yet actually banned anywhere, few retail flours available to the home baker are bromated anymore. Many varieties of flour packaged specifically for commercial bakeries are still bromated. Retail bleached flour marketed to the home baker is now treated mostly with either peroxidation or chlorine gas.