25 March: Flour

March is National flour month, so here are some facts about flour.

1. It's no coincidence that the word “flour” sounds like “flower”. They both come from the old French word for blossom, fleur, which had a figurative meaning also – “the finest”. Flour was the finest part of the grain since the coarse parts of the grain had been removed during the milling process.
2. People have been making flour since at least 6000 BC, using simple millstones.
3. Most flour is made from Wheat, but can be made from many other things including acorns, Almonds, green Bananas, Rice, chestnuts, chickpeas, coconuts, Coffee beans, corn, Hemp, Peanuts and Potatoes.
4. Flour is made from the endosperm of a grain of wheat. The milling process separates this from the outer casing, or bran, and the germ, or seed. Simply grinding it, as was done in ancient times, resulted in quite grainy, coarse flour. Today, there are machines which can open the grains and scrape out the endosperm.
5. White flour is flour made from simply the endosperm. Wholemeal flour is made from the whole grain.
6. Making flour can actually be quite dangerous as flour dust suspended in air is explosive. In 1878 22 people were killed as a result of an explosion in a flour mill in Minneapolis, USA, which led to widespread safety reforms in the flour manufacturing industry.
7. One grain of wheat makes more than 20,000 particles of flour.
8. About 4 million tonnes of flour are produced annually in the UK. 84% of it is made from home grown wheat.
9. The nanny state uses flour to make sure people get their daily requirements of certain nutrients. By law, calcium, Iron, niacin and thiamin must be added to all flours. Even though less than half the people who eat Bread are even capable of having babies, let alone actively trying to have them, the UK government is considering adding folic acid, which reduces birth defects, to flour as well. Even though too much folic acid could mask the symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency in older people, resulting in damage to their nervous systems.
10. How many calories in 100gm of flour? Depends which type of flour. Wholemeal flour has 327kcal, brown flour 339kcal, and white flour 252kcal.

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