Flour mill

“ He has a small grist mill and threshing mill, with which he threshes and grinds his grain. By grinding his wheat twice it makes a fair article of flour, but his facilities for bolting it are not quite up to the times, consequently his flour is not quite so white as our high grade flour, but it makes good bread, nevertheless. ”

“ The flour-mill, not yet completed, is to be worked by a steam-engine, and is to be arranged like the Baltimore steam-mill. In a short time four sets of stones will be in operation, and an oil mill is also to be connected therewith. As careful managers, the directors of the society, in the upper part of the mill, which is five stories high, put away grain enough for a year, in order to be secured against scarcity, which is even in this happy country much to be dreaded. ”

“ And yet the mill at Pittsburgh is making flour cheaper in England, by that competition which here forces onward improvement in mill-machinery; and by increasing the consumption of flour calls into action more superintending labour for its production. That particular American mill produces 500 barrels of flour per day, each containing 196lbs., and it employs forty managing persons. It produces cheap flour by saving labour in all its processes. It stands on the bank of a navigable river—a high building into which the corn for grinding must be removed from boats alongside. ”

“ Let such stay away: better to have their room than their company.
I have finished my door, and actually ornamented the show side with the aid of a bead-plane; and ground some of my own wheat in my steel mill, which grinds well and fast. I had been apprehensive on finding my store of flour so low, but now I have as much as relieves me from all danger of want. Flour is at present 7d. per pound; but the usual price, when there is a supply from the Cape or Van Diemen's Land, is 3d. per pound. ”

“ The modern corn and flour mill differs from the primitive hand-mill in the size of the stones, in the addition of an apparatus for separating the hulls and bran from the farinaceous part of the grain, and in the power applied for putting it in motion. ”

“ The flour mill grinds ten or twelve bushels in a day; and the saw mill furnishes an abundant supply of plank, posts, etc., for the public and private building of the nation settled here. [302] Indeed, [322] the location stood much in need of so useful a concern. The soil yields abundant crops of wheat, oats and potatos—the rich prairie here is capable of supporting thousands of cattle. Two large rivulets, now almost useless, can, with a little labor, be made to irrigate the fields, gardens, and orchards of the village. ”

“ A most up-to-date mill that turns out daily twenty-one tons of flour is, however, worthy of remark, since from the moment that the wheat is dumped into the granary to that when it emerges as fine flour and is mechanically poured into sacks, the whole process is effected by machinery. ”

“ I have said that recently ground meal makes far sweeter and richer bread, than that which has been ground a considerable time; but as it is not convenient for many families to send to a mill as often as they would like to have fresh meal, they are obliged generally to use staler meal or flour than they would choose. Yet every family might easily be furnished with a modern patent hand-mill, constructed after the plan of a coffee mill, with which they could at all times, with great ease, grind their wheat, and rice, and corn, as they want it, for bread and other purposes. ”

“ Perhaps the first impression which a visitor to a modern roller mill would receive is the great extent to which mechanical contrivances have replaced hand labour. Once the wheat has been delivered at the mill it is not moved again by hand until it goes away as flour and offals. It is carried along by rapidly moving belts, elevated by endless chains carrying buckets, allowed to fall again by 80 gravity, or perhaps in other cases transported by air currents. Another very striking development is the great care expended in cleaning the grain before it is ground. ”

“ The yield of flour obtained in a British roller mill averages 70 to 73% of the wheat berry. The residue, with the exception of a very small proportion of waste, is offal, which is divided into various grades and sold. Profitable markets for British-made bran have been found in Scandinavia, and especially in Denmark. In millstone milling the yield of flour probably averaged 75 to 80%, but a certain proportion of this was little more than offal. The length of the flour yield taken by British millers varies in different parts of the kingdom, because demand varies. ”

“ They afford a water-power to several mills, one of which, the Gallego Flour-Mill, is a splendid establishment, six stories high, nearly one hundred feet square, and capable of sending out daily 1200 barrels of flour. ”

“ There were no public mills at which flour could be36 ground, but, as now, in the unchangeable East, every family ground their own corn, and this task, as well as the making and baking of bread, was left to the women. See Matt. xxiv. 41: ‘Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.’ Again we find that it was a woman who was grinding corn on a housetop in Thebez who (Judges ix. 53) ‘cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and all to brake his skull.’ An Eastern flour mill consists of two stones, the upper one rotating on the lower. ”

“ That only accelerates the action of the yeast.
On the negative side, stone mills grind slowly and are very fussy about which grains they will grind. If the cereal is a bit moist or if the seed being ground is a little bit oily, the mill becomes instantly blocked.
Steel burr mills grind fast and coarsely and are inexpensive. Coarse flour makes heavy bread. The metal grinding faces tend to wear out and have to be replaced occasionally--if they can be replaced. ”

“ In all the world there is no other wizard that could have formed it, no other smith that could have welded its parts together or forged its lid of many colors. You have only to whisper your wishes into the small orifice on the top of the mill, and it will begin to run—you can hear its wheels buzzing and its levers creaking. Lay it on this side and it will grind flour—flour for your kitchen, flour for your neighbors, flour for the market. Turn the mill over, thus, and it will grind salt—salt for seasoning, salt for the reindeer, salt for everything. ”

“ We need, instead of mammoth flour mills, a multitude of smaller mills distributed through all the sections where grain is grown. Wherever it is possible, the section that produces the raw material ought to produce also the finished product. Grain should be ground to flour where it is grown. A hog-growing country should not export hogs, but pork, hams, and bacon. The cotton mills ought to be near the cotton fields. ”

“ In a larger mill or even in a mill of the same capacity where money was not an object, the various separations would probably be handled a little differently, the flour and middlings from the first and fifth breaks being handled together, and those from the second, third, and fourth breaks being also handled together. The reason for this separation being that the flour from the first and fifth breaks contain, the first a great deal of crease dirt, and the fifth more bran dust than that from the other breaks, the result being a lower grade of flour. ”

“ They maintain that the stones produce a higher grade of flour than can be 6 made by modern machine methods. So great was the demand for the millstone-ground flour that a manufacturing firm in Indiana made a miniature grist mill equipped with stones which was used in many private homes and on some farms. Power was furnished by a motor, a far cry from the old water wheel.
This picturesque mill is located just north of Dayton and is more than 100 years old. ”

“ The roller process has almost entirely driven out all other processes. Now and then we see by the roadside an old fashioned mill with the upper and nether stone, but we seldom see one that is prosperous and thriving. Millers, like everybody else in these days, do business on a large scale and to make flour on a large scale they must use the roller-mill. Thus the hole in the rock in which a handful of grain was laboriously crushed has, through long ages of growth, become the great factory in which thousands of barrels of flour are made in a day. ”

“ Our flour comes to us from great factories, but in that land each family had its own little mill. They poured the grain into a hole in the upper millstone, and then turned the stone round and round by a handle until the grain was ground into flour. This was hard work, but it was always done by the women. Often two women helped each other to turn the handle of the upper millstone. Mary's arms often ached in making the flour needed for her large family. ”

“ Nine-tenths, or perhaps ninety-nine hundredths, of all the flour consumed in Great Britain is made in roller mills, that is, mills in which the wheat is broken and floured by means of rollers, some grooved in varying degrees of fineness, some smooth, their work being preceded Roller milling. and supplemented by a wide range of other machinery. All roller mills worthy of the name are completely automatic, that is to say, from the time the raw material enters the mill warehouse till it is sacked, either in the shape of finished flour or of offals, it is touched by no human hand. ”

“ But good corn bread, hommony, mush, and various other dishes cannot be made of flour ground too fine. For all ordinary purposes, the common mill employed for grinding wheat, answers equally well for grinding maize. When it is required to grind the corn coarse, it is necessary only to elevate the uppermost stone and increase its speed ”

“ The grinding of six bushels of wheat at ninepence a bushel comes to four and sixpence, which pays the man and the boy, supposing them (which is not and seldom can be the case) to be hired for the express purpose out of the street. With the same mill you grind meat for your pigs; and of this you will get eight or ten bushels ground in a day. You have no trouble about sending to the mill; you are sure to have your own wheat; for strange as it may seem, I used sometimes to find that I sent white Essex wheat to the mill, and that it brought me flour from very coarse red wheat. ”

“ Americans are the cleverest people in the world for making machines do their work. Wheat is moved by machinery from the seed to the loaf of bread. Milling machinery is very wonderful. The grains are crushed between steel rollers. Other machines sift out the brown skin of the wheat seeds, and take out the little germ thatwould grow into a new plant. Machines mix the starch cells in the middle of the grain with the gluten cells around them. At the very last the flour is sifted through a silk gauze called bolting cloth. At the top of a mill the dusty brown grains pour into a big hopper. ”

“ Ground in this manner, the corn apparently keeps the goodness and the natural nutrients of the grain. It is not processed and bleached to a point where it tastes like a blotter. It actually tastes like corn. We have also tried some of the wheat flour, and the bread made from it is something to be experienced.
Other restoration projects that come to mind are two or three windmills in Chatham and Eastham which have been restored or reproduced, and a few herring runs, but there are many other places and sites that are gradually going unless we all make some effort to preserve them. ”

“ This yield in the United States for the year 1898 was:
FIG. 164.—ROLLER PROCESS OF MAKING FLOUR, WEGMANN’S PATENT.
For converting the grain into flour, the inventors of the Nineteenth [230] Century have made revolutionary changes. Milling processes within the last twenty-five years have been completely transformed by the introduction of the roller mill and middlings purifier. Formerly two horizontal disk-shaped stones or burrs were employed, the lower one stationary and the upper one revolving in a horizontal plane and crudely crushing the grain between them. ”

“ From time immemorial wheat has been reduced to flour by grinding it between heavy disks of stone set upon a shaft, the upper one of which revolved, while the nether one remained stationary. The grain, being introduced through an opening in the center of the upper stone, was ground between the burred surfaces of the stones, and gradually found its way outward, until it was discharged from the periphery or skirt of the stones in the form of flour. ”

“ While the older method of milling prevailed, pulverizing the entire wheat for flour, the softer wheats were preferred and wheat growing was largely restricted to regions producing them. With the introduction into the flour mills of the steel roller process, by which the contents of the kernel are simply squeezed out of the husk, it was found that a most desirable, better keeping flour could be produced from hard, northern and western wheats. Wheat growing in the United States thereby received a great impetus and the producing area was vastly expanded over the great plains. ”

“ I know, for I have tested it, that stone-ground flour produced by the old-fashioned windmill is infinitely sweeter, more nutritious, and more wholesome than the foreign roller-mill flour that is so starchy, "hence the present-day indigestion and the decay of teeth." Then, again, there is the fact, of which some clever people lose sight, that by importing flour and not wheat to grind at home we lose the valuable asset of "waste" as a fattening food for fowls, pigs, and cattle. ”