The History of Flour

Where would Cellone’s be without flour?! Here at Cellone’s, we use a high protein flour, and we use about 40 thousand pounds a day! Flour is a powder substance that is made by grinding cereal grain, seeds, or roots. It is made from wheat in Europe, North America, the Middle East, India, and North Africa. Flour plays an important role in our history. Where would we be without baking bread, cakes, and other foods.

Have you ever wondered where flour came from? About 32,000 years ago humans were thought to make flour for the first time. It is said the people in the southern part of Italy began to make flour using homemade tools as well as combination pestle and grinders. In later times, the Romans used flour by grinding seeds on cone mills and the ancient Greeks were the first to use watermills and windmills to produce flour. The watermills and windmills made the process of making flour less complex and allowed for greater production. In the older days, bread needed to be eaten quickly because it did not have any additives in it that would allow it to last longer, but the watermills and windmills gave the bread a longer shelf life.

The history of flour has had many changes over the years and is much different than the flour you may use today since you can find so many different types of flour at your local grocery store.

Now there are many kinds of flour including:

● Unbleached flour: flour that has not undergone bleaching or doesn’t have the same color as traditional white flour
● Refined flour has had the germ and bran removed. It’s also called white flour.

• Bleached flour is a type of refined flour that has had whitening agents added to it. Usually, the agent is potassium bromate, benzoyl peroxide, ascorbic acid, and chlorine gas.
• All-purpose flour does not have leavening agents.
• Self-rising flour is sold premixed with chemical leavening agents. It’s often used for lighter and softer baked products.
• Enriched flour is flour with nutrients that are often replaced during normal processing.

Flour really has come a long way since 32,000 years ago!

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