Wheat flour milling since ancient times

More than 17,000 years ago, humans began gathering and consuming plant seeds. It was during this time that they discovered the edibility of the wheat plant's berry. Around 8,000 years ago, Swiss lake dwellers ground early wheat, mixed it with water, and baked it to create unleavened cakes or bread.

Emmer, the oldest cultivated variety of wheat, was grown as early as 8700 B.C. in ancient Turkey and quickly spread to regions such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome, and Greece. The cultivation of wheat during these prehistoric times experienced rapid expansion, reaching North Africa and the Indus Valley in northern India by 4000 B.C, northern China by 3000 B.C. and western Europe by 2000 B.C.

The grinding of grain was one of the earliest food processing techniques adopted by civilized humans. While flour milling can be traced back to prehistoric times, the modern systems known as gradual reduction flour mills were only developed in the last 200-300 years. Ancient grinding methods have been observed in the Far East, Egypt, and Rome, with evidence of humans grinding grains with rocks as early as 6,700 B.C.

During the Neolithic period (between 5000 and 3000 B.C.), people already utilized wooden or stone mortars and querns to convert cereals into flour. The development of quern technology during the Greek-Roman era gave rise to the use of millstone manhandles. This technology was further enhanced over time, with larger grinders and the utilization of animal or water power in addition to human effort.

In ancient Egypt, the cereal grinding quern took the form of a mostly flat or slightly curved stone with a roughened surface. A handstone was rubbed back and forth along its long axis to pulverize the grains. This type of quern is also known as a saddle quern.

Before the invention of the rotary quern in northeastern Spain around the fifth century B.C., all grinding was done by manually rubbing a handheld handstone against a larger base stone.

Water mills made their appearance in Asia Minor in 85 B.C., while windmills emerged between 1180 and 1190 A.D. in Syria, France, and England.

In the nineteenth century, advancements in milling technology led to excellent performance and higher flour yields. The consumption of white flour and bread has historically been associated with prosperity. The development of sophisticated roller mills in Austro-Hungary during the second half of the 19th century allowed for the production of larger quantities of whiter flour compared to traditional milling methods involving stone grinding and sieving.
Wheat flour milling since ancient times

History of shredded wheat

Sometime in the early 1890’s, at a Nebraska hotel, Henry Perky — who suffered from heartburn— had encountered a man similarly afflicted, who was eating boiled wheat with cream.

The idea had cooked for a while in Perky’s mind, and in 1892 he had taken his idea of a product made of boiled wheat to Watertown, NY, where his friend William H. Ford, a machinist by trade, helped Perky build the device that he had conceived.

Henry Perky introduced his newly-built machine for making shredded wheat at the 1893 World’s Fair; the shredded wheat was described as “Tasting like a shredded door mat”. Perky had developed a process for making these things, and in 1895, Mr. Perky and William Ford were issued utility patents for their “Machine for the Preparation of Cereals for Food” (U.S. Patent No. 502,378, August 1, 1893), the first of dozens of patents that Perky would eventually receive in connection with the production of shredded wheat.

Perky’s business plan was to sell the machines and not the cereal. But the biscuits proved more popular than the machines.

In 1895 in Denver, Perky founded the Cereal Machine Company. He began distributing the shredded-wheat biscuits from a horse-drawn wagon in an attempt to popularize the idea. But the biscuits proved more popular than the machines themselves. So, Perky moved East and opened his first bakery in Boston, Massachusetts, and then in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1895. He retained the name of The Cereal Machine Company, and adding the name of the Shredded Wheat Company.

Perky was a pioneer of the “cookless breakfast food”, and it was he who first mass-produced and nationally distributed ready-to-eat cereal. By 1898, Shredded Wheat was being sold all over North and South America and Europe.

By 1901, he had set up an ultra-modern plant at Niagara Falls to make shredded wheat, and the falls became the familiar logo of the cereal, which continues as a Nabisco product. Edward A. Deeds, an electrical engineer became a director of the National Food Company, the new name Perky had adopted for his enterprises that produced Shredded Wheat and related products, such as Triscuits crackers.

In 1908, the company again took the name of The Shredded Wheat Company, and another factory was built in Niagara Falls, N.Y.
History of shredded wheat

History of wheat flour milling

Domestic cultivation of wheat has been documented at least since 9000 BC. The popularity of wheat has to do with its high content of gluten, which helps bread rise and is responsible for its elastic texture.

The first mills were either of the mortar and pestle type. The grain was place in a large saucer-shaped stone and a smaller rounded stone was used to crush it.

Or the saddlestone or metate which held the grain in a wide, shallow concavity in a flat or slanted stone where it was rubbed with a more or less cylindrical stone.

These primitive implements were followed by the quern, well known from early dynastic Egypt inward and consisting of a circular upper stone turned by hand power to animal power on a stationary lower stone.

Sometimes between 6000 and 5000 BC breads were made form wheat flours in both Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Romans adopted many of the milling and baking practices from Egypt. It appears that the Romans were the first people to develop a large mill that could be driven by a horse or a donkey.

Gristmills, such as the one at Jamestown in 1621, ground corn and wheat for meal and flour helping to feed the colonist and making the millers key local figures.

New York City became the first commercial center for wheat milling. Exporting wheat flour appears to have begun in the 1648s and the need for some form of inspection to ensure and maintain a good reputation was recognized by 1674.
History of wheat flour milling