ABSTRACT
The whole wheat was used by the ancients for food. Pliny describes “amylum,” a food prepared from unground wheat, which was first soaked, and then hardened into cakes in the sun. Milling products differ so in quality that many of them are each most suitable for a certain purpose of consumption. Hard wheat, of which the spring wheat of the Red river valley and the Turkey red wheat of Kansas are excellent examples, produces the flour that stands for the world’s white-loaf bread, or “light bread.” The flour made from soft wheat is the best flour for crackers, cake, pastry, and the hot ‘soda biscuits” so common in the southern portion of the United States. Soft-wheat flour has more starch and less gluten than hard-wheat flour. Bread is the oldest and most important product made from wheat. It supports life better than any other single food except milk, and it is the most staple food of modern civilization.
