Who invented wheat flour

The realization that indigestible seeds could be ground into nourishing dust steered the history and fate of man in a new direction. A whole grain of wheat has three layers. The germ is the nutrient dense embryo that will sprout into a new wheat plant. Throughout recorded history, man has ground wheat to make his daily bread. The Egyptians, about B. Wheat flour is, so far as can be determined, approximately as old as wheat — which was first domesticated in Neolithic Turkey. Definitely old-world.

The dried grain was made into flour using a millstone often turned using oxen to crush the wheat or barley or other grain. On a smaller scale handheld stones were used to make flour. There is evidence of all of this in Egyptian writings or pictures , throughout the Bible and in other historical writings. The Romans made flour by grinding seeds on cone mills, combination of two stone of which one, upper, is convex and other, bottom, concave.

Flour is a powder which is made by grinding cereal grains, seeds or roots. It is used as an ingredient for baking bread , cakes and in some other foods. Different cultures have flour made from different cereals and while in European, North America, Middle Eastern, Indian and North African cultures it is most commonly made from wheat , in Central America Mesoamerica it is made from corn from the ancient times while in central Europe it is made of rye.

Some types of flour are made from rice. Four is with us a long time now: there is archeological evidence that shows that flour was made some 30, years ago in the time of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe. Oldest technique for flour making was in combination of a stone mortar and pestle.

The Romans made flour by grinding seeds on cone mills, combination of two stone of which one, upper, is convex and other, bottom, concave. Upper was turned by an animal while the bottom stood still. In time, different mechanisms of grinding of flour were invented. Ancient Greeks had watermills before 71 BC. 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 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.

They left behind primitive sickles with flint blades: on these tools it is possible to detect marks that were probably caused by cutting grasses. It may have been this culture that started burying some of the grains in the ground again during a temporary deterioration of the climate.

The advent of agriculture changed the lives of the people. The Nomads started to settle, built villages and kept cattle. But even in the advanced civilizations the grains were still ground by hand between simple grindstones. The Romans were no longer satisfied with this: in order to supply the growing urban population with flour they ground the corn on cone mills — massive, heavy structures turned by slaves or animals.

And around 25 BC the architect and engineer Vitruvius described a water mill in which a paddle-wheel turned the millstones by way of a gearwheel. This invention of the ancient world was used again by the millers of the Middle Ages, but in the twelfth century a new construction reached the European continent: the windmill, that probably originated in the Orient.