The process of Grinding Wheat into Flour is an elaborate one. Before wheat is ground up, cleaning and conditioning of the wheat grains must occur. During cleaning, magnets and metal detectors are used to remove all metal impurities from the wheat. Other impurities which may consist of stones, dirt, seeds and other grains like oats and barley are also removed. The conditioning process is where moisture is added to the wheat to be ground to soften the outer covering also known as the bran so that it is easier to remove.
The clean and conditioned wheat is now mixed with wheat gluten which is meant to increase the protein content in the flour. Grinding of the wheat can now proceed. In the first stage of Grinding Wheat into Flour, the wheat is passed through a machine that opens up the wheat and separates the inner white portion from the skin. In the second stage, the grain is passed through several sieves. These sieves separate the fine grains from the ones with course outer skins still attached. The “fine” white grains are directed to another machine which grounds them up into fine white flour.
The pieces of grain that were not so fine go through stage one and two repeatedly until they are ready to be ground into flour too. The bran and wheat germ are ground up separately. As you may have already guessed, the best quality white flour comes from the grains that were separated from the bran early enough in this process. This is because passing the grains repeatedly through stage one and two produces wheat flour that is less white. For whole grain flour, the flour from bran, wheat germ and white grain is mixed back together.
To complete the process of Grinding Wheat into Flour, different types of wheat flour are then packaged separately and sent to the supermarkets and food grocery stores for us to buy. White and whole grain wheat flour can be used for biscuits, cakes, pies and confectionery. Flour from wheat germ and bran are used for certain cereals and health foods.
