Elements of the theory and practice of cookery

210. Rolling. — - Each pair of rollers turns in the same direction, but one moves two or three times as fast as the other ; both are grooved, so that they cut or break rather than crush the grain. Each passage between a pair of rollers is accordingly called a break. From the first break the wheat comes out warm from the friction of the roller and looking and feeling something like coarse, damp sawdust. Next it passes to a machine called a scalper^ where it is shaken on a wire tray to separate the bran as far as possible from the middlings, or bits of the white middle part of the grain — the part to be made into flour. Then back go the branny parts to be ground over by a second set of grooved rollers, and again " scalped " ; while the middlings are crushed between smooth rollers, sifted, mixed with more middlings from the second break of the wheat, and ground over and over till reduced to flour. ^ 211. Bolting. — After five breaks no more middlings are left in the bran, but a little fine bran called shorts 1 Part of the fine middlings may be taken out to sell as farina. BREAD 117 is still left to be taken out of the middlings. This is done by sifting, or bolting through silk gauze stretched over cylindrical frames called reels. The middlings are further purified by air-blasts that blow away flour- dust and light chaff. Having explained the milling process, the miller may show you a quantity of yellow disks the size of a pin head. These are germs flattened by the smooth rollers, and sifted out. If this were not done the diastase in them (§ 147) which prepares the starch for digestion by the seedling would spoil the flour by work- ing in it the same change that it does in the seed. 212. Packing. — Lastly, you may see the finished flour packed by a machine that forces just one hundred and ninety-six pounds into each barrel, to be sold, some of it, perhaps, to the farmers who raised the wheat it is made from, some to city people who never saw a wheat-field. 213. The best flour the most economical. — Most mills make several grades of flour. High grade patent flour is the whitest and the highest in price, although in some cases the next grade, called baker's, may be fully as nutritious. Lower grade flours are not desir- able, but so long as people buy them millers will sell them. There is no waste in a flour-mill ; screenings and bran are sold for cattle and horse feed, germ is made into a breakfast food, and, because people want cheap flour, a mixture of flour-dust, shorts, and other by-products is put up to satisfy the demands of their purses, if not of their bodies. 118 THEORY AND PRACTICE OF COOKERY Do not buy cheap flour, thinking you are saving money ; you are only helping the manufacturer to save. 214. Flour made from the whole grain. — Graham flour was formerly made by grinding the Avhole grain, with- out bolting it; what is now sold as "graham" is usually low-grade flour mixed with coarse bran, indigestible and irritating to the stomach and intestines. Entire or whole-wheat flour is produced by grinding together all parts of tlie kernel except the bran and the germ.