WHEAT Let us look first at a single grain of wheat, out of the bagful the farmer is about to sow, or the miller is about to pour into the hopper, to grind into flour. It is an oval body with a deep crease running lengthwise on one side, a tuft of fine hairs at the tip, and the chit, or embryo, at the base, and directly opposite to the groove. From this chit the wheat plant rises. Stored under the protect ing coats of the grain are the food elements that are to nourish the little plant until its own leaves and roots are able to support it independently. The baby plant and its lunch basket are wrapped up in the grain we are looking at.
Without a microscope it will be difficult for us to make out the various coats that wrap the store of starch that forms 93 per cent. of the kernel's bulk. Six per cent. of it is the embryo, with its shield that protects and absorbs food for the minute plantlet, whose root and stem are visible when the grain is soaked. The seed wrappings form the remaining i per cent. of the whole.
A thin skin, the epidermis, covers the grain. Four coats under the skin compose the bran, the third from the outside being the coloring matter which gives the brown tinge to whole wheat flour.
Under the bran layers is a layer of gluten, that envelops the central body of starch and the chit, and weighs 8 per cent, of the grain. This is the part that is sticky; because of its presence in wheat flour we are able to have spongy bread, "risen" with yeast.
"Light" bread that is also white bread, is so commonly used by nations of the highest civiliza tion that an American must travel widely in order to realize that in many countries it is a luxury enjoyed by few. Other grains form the staff of life, and bread is not white. One of the distinc tions of the United States is the fact that it raises more wheat than any other country, and the poor est families eat white bread as regularly as their rich neighbors.