Milling and Grain
A Brief History of Milling
Milling is one of the oldest forms of food processing. The preparation of grains to eat can be traced back to the earliest human settlements. Many early civilizations started where there was good fertile soil and water to irrigate crops. This allowed early man to settle in one place and change from being a hunter gatherer to a farmer. Hunter gatherers would have eaten grains and seeds in their raw state, maybe crushing them between stones to render them more palatable possibly boiling them up into a form of coarse porridge. However rocks are heavy to carry around and so it would not have been until farming enabled man to stay in one place that the process of milling with purpose built stones or "Querns" would have started.
Querns
The earliest methods, which have been dated back to Prehistoric or Neolithic times were crude but can still be found in use today in parts of east Asia.
These early Querns consisted of two stones, the bottom stationary one, Saddle stone or Quern, and the upper or movable one, the Handstone. The Handstone would be pulled back and forth across the Quern with grain being introduced between the two. This was more of a crushing process than a grinding one and so would have produced a pretty coarse flour. The name Saddle comes from the characteristic shape that the bottom stone assumed after many years of use - resembling a rudimentary horse's saddle.
Different materials were used in the Querns from pigments and bark to nuts, seeds and fruits. The most improtant material however was grain to make flour for use in baking. These stones were often very heavy and may have required two people to operate.
In the Stone Age, Rotary Querns appeared which were more circular in appearance. The top stone had a wooden handle placed off centre and a central hole through which grain could be introduced, while the stone was turned by the handle.
It was within the great classic civilisations from the Sumerians to the Romans, also in the Indus, that further strides were taken in milling techniques. Flour became finer and finer but it was still what we might call “wholemeal” flour, and very coarse at that. Many skeletal remains from this time show very poor dentition believed to be from the coarseness of the food. Eventually mills were constructed of much larger stones that were turned by a number of slaves or animals to produce finer and finer flours.
The next stage was the discovery that separating out the coarse particles, the bran and wheatgerm, produced a much finer and far more appealing product. It is believed that the weaving of baskets or crude sieves, either from hair or papyrus, was the first step in purifying flour. It is the Romans who are credited as being the first to sieve flour through linen to produce what was effectively the first white flour, although this was certainly done earlier by other peoples. Linen was very expensive and therefore it would only have been the very rich who could afford to have the best flour. It is thought that the word "flour" is derived from the Roman “Flos” meaning “flower” or the best part of the plant.
The need for more processed flour was driven both by the increasing size of communities and the need to provide constant food supplies. Smaller groups could still provide enough ground grain using simpler methods,but with growing numbers of population through Imperial expansion and with slaves and soldiers needing to be fed, centralized production was vital.
So it is to the Romans that many of the early advances in the mass production of flour must be credited, although it must also be remembered that the Romans learnt much technology from the preceeding civilisations they conquered. This is the nature of formal and written history...to the victor the spoils, which includes the credit for inventions and technology. In effect from 1000BC till the 1100’s there was little further significant change until watermills and windmills became commonplace, much of this technology coming from China. By medieval times there were 3 general grades of flour, wholemeal, sifted brown and sifted white, the latter actually being much browner or creamy-coloured than the pure white flour which was to become available in Industrial/Victorian times from finer grinding by roller mills and multiple sifting.
Nowadays there are two systems of milling in common use. The traditional rotating stones, little changed in principle from ancient times and the much faster and more modern technique of roller milling that was invented during the Industrial Revolution of the 1900s.