Breads and Yeast-Leavened Bakery Foods

A major portion of wheat flour in the United States is utilized in commercial bakeries for production of breads and similar yeast-raised bakery foods. The latest published data indicated that this sector of the industry consumed in 1992 almost 22 billion lb of flour. As evident from Figure 1, the need for flour tends to increase at an approximate rate of about 1 billion lb/year. This sector also uses about 58% of total flour shipped, for baking (Fig. 2).