Meet George

George is a curious student who loves food!

Anything to do with food he wants to know about, so he’s here to help us find out everything we can about baking!

Watch this video…

After that you should have a better idea as to how flour is made.

What is flour?

Flour is one of the main ingredients used to make bread!

Flour comes from wheat that is grown by farmers all over the place.

How do you make flour from wheat? They look nothing alike!

Well the wheat first needs to be milled – which basically means grinding up the wheat to turn it into flour.

Milling? Is that where windmills come from?

Yes!

Windmills have been around for a very long time. The wind turns those big blades on the windmill and they turn the mill inside that grinds the wheat down into flour.

These worked well for thousands of years but in modern times we use much bigger mills that make much more flour.

To make all the flour we need, over 5 million tonnes of grain needs grinding in a mill every year!

So how do modern mills make flour?

First the wheat needs preparing before it gets milled which has 4 stages.

1. Clean the wheat

The wheat has come from the farm so it needs a clean before it gets turned into flour.

They use magnets and other machines to remove any metal and stones that might be mixed in with the grain.

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2. Blow dry the wheat

Next the wheat gets a nice blow dry.

The air currents carry away any dust that might be on the wheat.

3. Give the wheat a shower

Next the wheat gets a shower which softens the outer layer of the grain.

This is important as the outer layer is too tough to make good flour.

4. The wheat undergoes ‘grafting’

This is where they mix different grains in different proportions to make different types of flour.

Now the wheat is ready to be milled!

The milling happens in 3 stages:

1. Cracking

The grains are cracked which makes the outer coat of the wheat even looser.

2. Rolled

The grain is then rolled to release the endosperm and wheat grain.

3. Sieved

Finally the grain is sieved so that they can collect all the different parts and make the flour.

Your mission is to complete this quiz about milling.

Check back tomorrow for another mission all about baking!

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