Wheat flour - Recipes ingridient

For many years, data from official science indicated that the first flour on the planet appeared in the Neolithic period. All this time, scientists assumed that the ancient people who inhabited the lands of the Middle East were the first to start making flour. But in 2015, these data had to be revised. Archaeologists representing the Italian Institute for Prehistoric and Early History have made a startling discovery. According to them, the first flour on Earth appeared much earlier. Italian researchers claim that they found evidence of the existence of this product already in the Paleolithic period, which is almost 30 thousand years ago. And the scientists found the traces of the oldest flour on the planet in the Tuscan village of Bilancino. True, that very first flour was not at all like a modern one. Yes, and it was made by people of the Stone Age from the marsh plant of cattail.

WHO INITIATED TO CRUSH WHEAT

But no matter how happy the Italians are with their discovery, the primacy of creating flour from cereals still remains with the East and the Neolithic period. Archaeologists suggest that ancient people began to domesticate wild wheat 11 thousand years ago. And it must be that at this time, powdered grains were already an important product in the menu of ancient people.

In the most ancient times, people crushed wheat grains with stones, then they invented stone stupas, in which they had already learned how to grind grains into a fine powder. Interestingly, in ancient times, roughly the same stone mortars were used to make flour both in Egypt and on the territory of modern Russia. In time, the first large mills appeared. By the way, the first automatic water mill appeared only at the end of the XVIII century. It came up with her American Oliver Evans. And the first steam mill in Russia was built at the beginning of the XIX century in the village of Vorotyntsevo. By the way, it was one of the very first mills of this type in the world. Previously, the Russian steam mill appeared only in London.

But back to the wheat flour. Back in those old times, when wheat grains were crushed with stones, they were already making the first bread. Although he was very different from our usual bread. These were unleavened cakes made from flour and water, baked on the fire. But it was the very first wheat bread on the planet.

WHAT ARE THE VARIETIES AND VARIETIES OF FLOUR BEING

Wheat flour is wheat grains that have been ground to a powder and used in cooking to make a dough and other dishes.

The type of flour depends on the variety of grain (or other raw materials) used to produce the product. Thus, in addition to wheat, there are rye flour, buckwheat, oat amaranth, corn, almond, hemp, chickpea, half a berry, and even from the fruits of some berries.

Depending on the purpose wheat flour is of two types:

• bakery;
• macaroni;

Bakery makes of soft varieties of cereal. For pasta, as a rule, use grains of solid varieties of cereal.

As for the varieties of the product, according to the traditional classification, there are five of them:

1. top grade;
2. first grade;
3. second grade;

In addition to the five classic varieties, there are several others, which will also be discussed below. But we must immediately make the reservation that in the case of wheat flour, the traditional classification by grade does not indicate the quality of the product. That is, one cannot say that a top-quality product is good, and the second grade is low-quality flour. The classification is based on a different indicator: how much powder is obtained from 100 kg of grain. The higher the yield, the lower the grade of the product.