Wheat bran

“ When it is stated that the ash of the whole grain of wheat is but 3 per cent, while the ash of wheat bran is 7.3 per cent, and that in the case of the former 46.38 per cent of the ash is phosphoric acid, and in that of the latter 50 per cent, it can easily be understood how a too liberal use of wheat bran should prove dangerous if fed dry. ”

“ Wheat starch is not very commonly used for commercial purposes but is highly prized for some things, especially in the sizing of textile fabrics. The germ in wheat is particularly rich in oil and the bran or outside covering in protein. The common idea that the bran is composed mostly of silicious matter is wholly erroneous. On the contrary the bran is a highly nutritious food, and the objection to it for human food is mostly of a mechanical nature. ”

“ Composition of Wheat Offals.—Bran and shorts are characterized by a high percentage of fiber, or cellulose. The ash, fat, and protein content of bran are all larger than of flour. The protein, however, is not in the form of gluten, but is largely albumin and globulins, [16] which are mainly in the aleurone layer of the wheat kernel, and are inclosed in branny capsules, and consequently are in a form not readily digested by man. ”

“ The red varieties yield the largest amount of grain, but the white the whitest flour.
Wheat is preferred to the other cereal grasses as an article of food on account of its containing a larger quantity of flesh-forming matters. The flour also may be rendered very white by separating it from the husks, or bran, and the fruit is much more easily separated from the chaff than is the case with the other cereals. The proportion of flesh and force-producing to those of force-producers only, is more nearly adjusted to the requirements of the system in wheat than in any other food. ”

“ Clover hay, linseed-meal and wheat bran contain about six pounds of lime in every hundred, and turnip-tops, carrots and all grasses have a goodly percentage. Flesh comes from nitrogenous or albumenal foods, first of which are beef, linseed-meal, middlings, bran, clover hay, wheat and skimmed milk. Fat and heat we get from carbonaceous 60 provenders, among which corn and buckwheat lead, closely followed by oats, wheat, rye, clover hay, linseed-meal and unskimmed milk. ”

“ Thus, the total of actual bran in any wheat does not exceed ten per cent. The proximate bran was then subjected to an artificial digestive process, to discover how much more of its substance it would yield in that way. The quantity of "ultimate" bran left after this experiment was reduced by 18·44 per cent, or to 7·87 per cent for the crude meals, and by 21·88 per cent, or to 4·56 per cent for the standard meals. The more powerful natural digestion of the stomach must certainly extract still more from the meals. ”

“ The berry is thereby divided into two longitudinal halves, of which many still cohere at the back, thus resembling an open book.
'In case the rolls are closer together, then, with soft wheat, a flattening takes place, and the middlings obtained therefrom are very clean or free from bran. Hard wheat is much more considerably reduced, and a proper breaking is effected. * * * Rolls with smooth surfaces operate more by compression; those with fluted surfaces more in a cracking or breaking manner. ”

“ Strength is usually associated with certain external characters which can readily be judged by the eye of the practised wheat buyer. Strong wheats are usually red in colour, their 61 skin is thin and brittle, the grain is usually rather small, and has a very characteristic horny almost translucent appearance. The grains are extremely hard and brittle, and when broken the inside looks flinty. On chewing a few grains the starch is removed and there remains in the mouth a small pellet of gluten, which is tough and elastic like rubber, but not sticky. ”

“ All the cereal grains, as millet, rice, maize, rye, barley and oats are utilized more or less by the inhabitants of the countries where these are cultivated, but wheat is the most suited for the purpose of making the best qualities of bread. Wheaten flour contains in slightly varying proportions, according to the kind of wheat from which it is manufactured, starch, gluten—a grey, viscid, elastic, nitrogenous substance, consisting chiefly of vegetable fibrine—sugar, gum, mineral matter and water. ”

“ It is of less importance in the making of bread than spring, or hard, wheat, but it is the kind that has been grown for centuries and from which the varieties of spring wheat have been cultivated. It is a softer grain than spring wheat, because it contains less gluten and more starch. The flour made from it does not produce so elastic a dough mixture as does that made from the other variety of wheat; consequently, the finished product, such as bread, rolls, etc., is likely to be more tender and more friable, or crumbly. ”

“ The well-known division of wheats into spring and winter wheats has reference to their resistance to cold, but also to ability to mature their seed in a single, short growing season. The grasses from which the cereals are derived are perennials while the cultivated cereals are, on the whole, annuals. The ideal climate for wheat is one with a mild winter, a cool and moist spring conducive to abundant development of the vegetative part of the plant, followed by a warm, dry summer for rapid ripening of the grain. ”

“ Its grain, however, in its wild state, is so small, as to appear worthless to those who are acquainted with the grain of cultivated wheat. It is, nevertheless, still gathered in some districts, where ancient custom still prevails, and after being tied up in bunches and dried in the sun, it is set fire to, and the light chaff burns so rapidly, that the grains are quickly freed from it, and only browned by the process, and when thus slightly roasted, it is considered a very agreeable food. ”

“ It would be useless to go into a more extended notice of varieties, as some do best in certain localities, and all are rapidly spread through the dealers, and by the influence of agricultural periodicals. The best time to harvest wheat is when the straw below the head has turned yellow, and the grain is so far out of the milk as not to be easily mashed between the fingers, but before it has become hard. The grain is heavier and of better quality, and wastes far less in harvesting, than when allowed to ripen and dry standing in the field. ”

“ A knowledge of the origin of many other domesticated plants now lost, may be eventually recovered by similar methods to those described above. It has been shown of the grain of the cultivated wheat, that like the useful portions of many other plants, it is a monstrosity, but a most useful and important one. To prove that it is really a monstrosity, we have only to consider that the seed is more than ten times its natural bulk, while the husk is reduced to proportions far inferior to those of the typical plant. ”

“ It is not only necessary that ripe corn should be cut as soon as possible, but it is sometimes desirable to reap it before it becomes fully matured. When the grain is intended for consumption as food, the less bran it contains the better. Now the bran, as is well known, forms the integument, or covering of the vital constituents of the seed; and it is the last part of the organ to be perfected. The growth of the seed for several days before its perfect development, is confined to the testa or covering. ”

“ Being more easily cultivated than wheat, especially in cold countries, it is cheaper and therefore more of a poor man's food.
Indian corn, or maize, or Turkish wheat, is one of the finest of cereals. It is used extensively in America, North and South, in parts of the Orient, in Italy, the Balkans, Servia, and elsewhere. It is used as a green vegetable and when fully matured is ground into meal and made into bread, porridge, biscuits, Johnny-cake, etc., etc. Corn compared to wheat is rich in fat, but in protein wheat is the richer by about 3 per cent. ”

“ There she sat, a sheaf of wheat held with both hands, and with this she was vigorously belaboring the barrel, at every stroke a shower of wheat-grains raining down upon quilts and coverlets which had been arranged to catch it. By this simple process she flailed as much as a bushel or two at one time. She then spread the sheets out on the ground, in the open air, and poured the wheat on them in a continuous stream. The wind acted as a great “fan,” the grain by its own weight falling in one place, while the chaff was carried off by the wind. ”

“ He says, that although the seeds of wheat are rendered so lean and shrivelled by the exhausting power of the fungus that scarcely any flour fit for the manufacture of bread can be obtained by grinding them, these very seeds will, except perhaps in the very worst cases, answer the purposes of seed corn as well as the fairest and plumpest sample that can be obtained. ”

“ Corn-stems are firm and dry, but grass-stems hold the soaking moisture of rain and dew, which saturates the skin even through fur and feather, and quite beyond the remedy of dog-like shakings. Wheat, as we have said, is the corn most favoured of all creatures—where not planted too thickly, and growing on ground not over clean, but dotted plentifully with bunches of knapweed, thistles, and bindweed, and intersected by furrows where the corn has grown poorly, and with open spaces bare to the wind and sun. ”

“ Ancient Roman bread. Public bakers. Use of bad flour. Adulterations. Poisonous agents used to disguise them.
Among the materials used for making bread in our country—and, in fact, of all the known productions of the vegetable kingdom in any country, wheat is decidedly the best; and it is a remarkable fact, that wheat comes nearer to man than perhaps any other plant, in its power of becoming adapted to different climates, over a wide extent of the earth’s surface, so that it may almost be said that wherever the human species can flourish, there wheat can be cultivated. ”

“ With us, wheat is chiefly employed for the fabrication of bread. It is, in fact, the only grain of which light porous bread can be made; but rye and barley are also used as bread-corn. The farina of the other cerealia afford also a nutritive and wholesome bread; though their flour is not so susceptible of the panary fermentation, it cannot be made into the white texture of the wheaten loaf. The bread formed from them is consequently much inferior to that prepared from wheat. ”

“ Without proper cooking they are unpalatable and unwholesome, and they are not so easy to cook as wheat. They take a longer time and we cannot get the same culinary effects, since with the exception of rye they will not make a light loaf. Fortunately we are not asked to deny ourselves wheat entirely, only to substitute other cereals for part of it. Let each housewife resolve when next she buys flour to buy at the same time one-fourth as much of some other grain, finely ground, rye, corn, barley, according to preference, and mix the two thoroughly at once. ”

“ Of the three grains herein briefly treated we have seen that wheat stands at the head as a food for man in our country. In any form it is prepared it can be a complete and palatable food. The albuminoids (gluten, etc.) are in such abundance and form that the flour may produce snowy, spongy and most healthful bread—truly a staff of life on which all rejoice to lean. Rye is a declining grain, it being replaced by wheat. It will grow on poorer soil than wheat, but with the many kinds of commercial fertilizers at our service no one should grow rye because of an impoverished soil. ”

“ Wheat of the best description is dearer than barley, both by weight and measure, and possesses but about one-twelfth part more flesh-forming material, but it is fortunate that the small cheap wheat is the best for poultry, for Professor Johnston says, "the small or tail corn which the farmer separates before bringing his grain to market is richer in gluten (flesh-forming food) than the full-grown grain, and is therefore more nutritious." ”

“ This most important constituent is subject to great variation in wheat, so much so that this grain grown in one locality makes a light bread, while that from another, in the same hands and under the same treatment, yields a heavy bread, and of poor quality. No one doubts that much improvement may be made in the milling of corn—as much, perhaps, as has been recently effected in that of wheat. ”

“ Wheat, like our other grains, belongs to the Grass Family and its scientific name is Triticum vulgare. It is the most valuable of all the cereal grasses and, next to maize, or Indian corn, the most productive. Rice is really its only rival as a human food. It is generally supposed that it originally came, like so many of our grains and fruits, from the plains of Central Asia, but it has been found that a certain wild grass of Western Asia and the Mediterranean regions, can be cultivated into what we call wheat. ”

“ About 32 per cent of the wheat acreage of the United States is of this class. The varieties that make up this important class of wheat have hard red kernels and are grown from fall sowing, chiefly in the central part of the United States. There are only a few distinct varieties grown. The original strains were introduced from Russia. They have become important in the United States because of their winter hardiness, drought resistance, and high yields. From hard red winter wheat is manufactured a flour of high bread-making quality. ”

“ There are some, again, that are sown at either season in Italy, and others at a third period, or, in other words, in the spring. Some authors give the name of spring-grain to millet, panic, lentils,96 chick-peas,97 and alica,98 while they call wheat, barley, beans, turnips, and rape, sementive or early sowing seeds. Certain species of wheat are only sown to make fodder for cattle, and are known by the name of “farrago,”99 or mixed grain; the same, too, with the leguminous plants, the vetch, for instance. The lupine,100 however, is grown in common as food for both cattle and men. ”