We take for granted many things in our day to day lives.  I suppose it’s essential to cope with the busy schedule all working adults must deal with.  Consider for a moment:  Store-bought flour and baked products.  Most of us assume that the grain used to make all the baked goods and even the packaged flour comes to us much like the story of The Little Red Hen.  She planted the wheat, she watered the wheat, she harvested the wheat, threshed it, took it to the mill to be ground, took the flour home and then baked bread.  Mmm Mmmm good, etc.

Well, up until 1870’s that is basically what happened and on the surface it may not seem to be any different now.  But as the saying goes: the devil is in the details…  From the book, “The Story of a Grain of Wheat” by William C. Edgar (1904) we read the following:

“The substitution of rolls for mill-stones was the most radical advance ever made in the science of milling. Continue reading →