Whole Wheat Meal' Baking Plants.— Quite a number of modern baking plants man ufacture bread and other bakery goods from whole wheat meal, which has become more extensively employed since the introduction of wheat substitutes by food administration ruling, as the wheat bread prepared from substitutes generally lacks the quality of whiteness anyway. Whole wheat bread, containing as it does the bran and the germ finely ground, or more coarsely in some meal, is darker in color— yellowish gray to yellowish brown. These products are made, aerated and also not aerated. In some whole wheat bakeries a milling plant is installed. The whole wheat is run into storage bins from the car; from these it reaches a blower and sifter that takes out the chaff and larger-than-wheat particles, like corn and other coarse impurities; then it passes over a set of screens which take out the smaller-than wheat particles, like rye and other small seeds, leaving the wheat clean and pure to go into the roller mills, where it is crushed between a set of two corrugated rolls traveling in opposite directions, the fineness of the meal depending upon whether the rolls are set closer together or farther apart. The fine meal is employed in the production of whole wheat aerated bread, whole wheat cakes, pies; whereas the coarse meal is employed for non-aerated bread. Whole rye bread generally goes with whole wheat bread.
Whole Grain, Contra Refined Flour A movement has set in that seems constantly growing to retain in the flour as much of the valuable nutrient ingredients of the whole grain kernel as possible, be this wheat, rye, corn, barley or other cereals; that is, to use a less refined flour, or as some have it, a less denatured flour or meal, a product that contains the valuable ingredients and qualities inherent in the germ and in the bran, which is rich in nutrients, including oil, and which is replete with valuable gluten and phosphates, while in patent flour or highly refined flour these nutrients are removed through milling and bolting as much as possible, simply to ob tain whiteness and better color. Thus we now have whole wheat flour, resulting from the ing of wheat without the removal of more than say 1 to 1Y2 per cent of the wheat in the form of bran or germ, besides graham flour, which is the unbolted wheat meal made from clean, sound wheat with only the coarse bran particle removed, by screening. Bolted wheat flour, so
called, is produced by grinding of wheat with not more than 10 per cent of the weight re moved in the form of bran or germ, whereas with patent flour about 30 per cent of bran and germ particles are removed by bolting.
The United States Department of Agricul ture has suggested, but has not yet adopted, cer tain standards. of flour, in part as follows: Straight flour, made from hard spring, soft spring, hard winter, Durum or soft winter wheat. This is the fine, clean, ground, un bleached product made from wheat meal by bolting or other process accomplishing the same result from which none of the purified mid dlings flour shall have been removed, and which does not exceed 97 per cent of the total flour produced, and contains not less than a speci fied percentage of nitrogene 1.50 to 1.75 per cent ; of fibre not more than .50 per cent; ash, .44 to .65 per cent calculated to a moisture con tent of 11 per cent and differing for the different varieties of wheat. Patent flour is made from wheat as qualified for straight flour from the meal by bolting, and produced by the reduction of the best purified middlings, with a specified percentage of ash of .42 to .55 per cent. First clear flour is a straight flour made from such wheat from which the patent flour or a portion of the purified middlings has been removed with a specified percentage of ash of .70 to 1.0 per cent. Thus, patent flours are chiefly made from the inner portions of the berry farthest removed fsom the outer bran layer and the germ, and containing least of the component parts of either, both bran and germ being gray ish in color. The flour most devoid of particles of these is naturally the whitest. They are also lowest in gluten and ash, two valuable nutrients of flour. The straight flours contain more particles of bran and germ, and consequently the flour is darker, but richer in gluten and ash, and the bakery products from these straight flours are more nutritious. The clear flours contain still more particles of bran and germ, and are still darker in color and contain more gluten and ash. Graham flours already men tioned have only the coarsest parts of the bran and in whole wheat meal or flour only the im purities (chaff, foreign seeds, dust) are re moved, that is, the whole wheat, after cleaning and scouring, is ground to meal of different de grees of fineness.