Archives

Perhaps there’s more to flour fermentation than the bubbles that lighten the loaf.

A small bakery in Toronto, Canada, became a behemoth that bestrides global bread and beyond. Phew!

St Anthony Falls powered the sawmills that created the financial capital that laid the foundations for General Mills.

Samson was grinding. He wasn’t pressing. No matter what some artists may think.

A large slave-driven mill could grind seven kilograms of flour an hour. A watermill multiplied that twenty times or more.

Ferragosto and the Feast Day of the Assumption of Mary; connected, perhaps, by a sheaf of wheat.

Bashing wheat with a hammer will not give you flour. What you need is a shearing force, which you get by grinding the grain between two stones.

How Delwen Samuel, an archaeologist, replicated the bread of Egyptian workers of 3000 years ago. This is the episode that should have been called Bake Like an Egyptian.

That kernel of wheat isn’t actually a seed or a berry, at least not to a botanist. The rest of us can call it what we like.

Synthetic wheat; it isn’t natural, but it is a very good thing.