Revolution of Britain’s flour milling industry

The first roller plants appeared in Britain in the 1860s and 1870s, brought by German and Austrian immigrants like G. A. Buchholz, Oscar Oexele, and Henry Simon.

Henry Simon was born in 1835 in Brieg, Germany, in the Prussian province of Silesia. He studied engineering at Zurich, practiced in Europe and went to Manchester, England in 1860.

Moving to the milling process proper, it was in 1878 that Henry Simon took 19 British millers, to Hungary to view the all steel roller-mill invention.

He then founded Henry Simon Ltd, built first roller-mill and introduced gradual roller-mill reduction ‘Simon System’ for McDougal Brothers. Simon’s system in the McDougall Brothers mills in Manchester, completed in 1878, was the first complete roller milliner system to make no use do stones at all.

Simon went on to become the most successful of milling engineers in Britain, supplying the bulk of new roller milling systems by the turn of the century. In 1881 he built the world’s first automatic Simon System mill in Chester.
Revolution of Britain’s flour milling industry

Bagel – a round yeast roll for breakfast

A bagel is a round yeast roll with a hole in the middle. A true bagel is completely plain and is made with white wheat high-gluten flour, then boiled in water and baked. Boiling the dough reduces the starch content and gives the bagel its outer sheen an hard crust.

The name bagel comes or the German word beugel meaning a round loaf of bread. The first mention of the bagel was in 1610 in Kracow, Poland. Bagels were sold on the streets of New York by the early 20th century.

Bagels now rank one of the most popular breakfast foods in the United States. However, the size of bagels are increasing as well, turning a normally low fat, low-calories food into a high-calories food.

 

Bagels are offered in every conceivable flavor, from the more traditional pumpernickel or onion to the sweetened blueberry or chocolate chip version as well as many other flavors in between. In general, bagels have a very simple formulation.

The formula is very similar to simple bread or roll formulas: flour, salt, yeast and water. Traditional bagels were made with very high protein, spring wheat flour.
Bagel – a round yeast roll for breakfast

History of cereal grass

The grass family includes all the major cereals, such as wheat, maize, rice, barley, and oats, and most of the minor grains as well, such as rye, common millet, finger millet, teff, and many others that are less familiar.

The cereal grass barley was domesticated about 10,000 years before the present in the Fertile Crescent and became a founder crop of Neolithic agriculture. The Chinese honored the healing properties of wheat grass as far back as 2800 BC. The Romans and Egyptians have similar ceremonies for worshipping cereal grasses and grains. It has been said that people in the ancient Middle East ate the green leaf tips of the wheat plant as a delicacy.

Bottled, dehydrated cereal grass has been a popular food supplement for people in the United States since the early 1930s.

The consumption of wheatgrass in the Western world began in the 1930s as a result of experiments by Charles F. Schnabel and his attempts to popularize the plant. Schnabel, an agricultural chemist, conducted his first experiments with young grasses in 1930, when he used fresh cut grass in an attempt to nurse dying chickens back to health. The hens not only recovered, but they produced eggs at a higher rate than healthy hens.
History of cereal grass

Manufacturing of breakfast cereal

Breakfast cereal manufacturing was one of the earliest commercial applications of extrusion cooking technology and remains one of the most widespread.

The first breakfast industry was established in Battle Creek, Michigan, by the Kellogg brothers, Dr. John H, Kellogg filed a patent for production of flaked cereals in 1894, and soon C.W Post invented the first prototype of the Grape Nuts that are still manufactured and sold today.

Plain breakfast cereals may be categorized by the processes through which they pass and which give them distinctive characteristics:. These include:
*Flaked
*Extrusion puffed
*Oven puffed
*Gun puffed
*Shredded
*Hot cereals
*Baked

The manufacture of breakfast cereals involves appropriate selection and combination of raw materials, highly sophisticated production steps, and stringent quality control programs.

Depending on the type of breakfast cereal, the grain will be used in total, or may require further processing which often includes a crushing step of the whole grain between large metal rollers in order to remove the outer layer of bran.

The whole grain or coarse grain fractions are mixed with the rest of the raw ingredients including water in order to be cooked to the required state.
Manufacturing of breakfast cereal

History of Rye

Rye is the fifth cereal in importance in the world and in the United States. It is exceeded in the world by corn, wheat, oats and rice.

The origin of rye domestication is unknown but it was being cultivated at several locations in the general area of Turkey, north-western Iran and Armenia by 6000 BC. Rye arrived in Europe as cultivated crops by 4000 BC.

Unlike other grain, this nutritious food has always been a second class cultivar, somewhat considered a food of the poor. It first appeared as a significant food crop in northern Europe. From there, cultivation of the grain spread southward throughout the continent and, after about the 16th century, across the southern part of Russia into Siberia.

Al living standards in the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans and some other European cultures rose, the consumption of rye diminished, though people living in Germany, Scandinavia and eastern European nations still appreciate rye’s taste and nutrition.

During the Middle Ages, the poorer people of England ate bread made from rye, or from a mixture of rye and wheat, known as maslin.

It was unknown in the western hemisphere until it was brought to North America and to western South America by European settlers in the 16th and 17th centuries, and thence to the rest of South America, Australia, and South Africa.

Today, the majority of the world’s rye comes from the Russian Federation, Poland, China, Canada, and Denmark grow rye commercially as well.
History of Rye

Breakfast cereal brand of Post

In 1891, Charles W. Post was a patient in the Kellogg brother’s sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan and it was here that he was first introduced to breakfast cereal.

The Postum Cereal Company was formed in 1896 to market Postum, a coffee substitute made out of wheat bran and molasses.

In 1897 Post introduced a cereal that he called Grape-Nuts. This was followed in 1904 by Elijah Manna, a cornflake cereal that would not be a hit with consumers until it was renamed Post Toastiest.

Some years later, in 1929, this company acquired the General Foods Company owned by Clarence Birdseye.

In 1985, Philip Morris purchased General Foods and acquired its Post Cereal Division, which had a declining sales problem.

Philip Morris purchased Kraft in 1988 and in 1989 Kraft and General Foods were merged into one giant entity.

Ralcorp Holdings acquired Post Cereal from Kraft Foods for $2.6 billion and that acquisition was completed August 4, 2008 with the hopping to add a maker of well-known food brands to its stable of business.

In 2011, Ralcorp decided to split Post Foods into a separate company. The spinoff was completed on February 7, 2012.
Breakfast cereal brand of Post

John Harvey Kellogg and the invention of breakfast cereals

In 1877, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (February 26, 1852 – December 14, 1943) created a similar cereal called granola, but not until his invention of corn flakes in 1902 did cereal become a commercial success. At first, most cereals were marketed as pure, whole-grain foods.

John Kellogg first began experimenting with new ways to prepare healthy food.  Yet, he had a vision for the future and he successfully turned dry cereal into a thriving business.

In 1894, after several failed experiments, John Kellogg accidentally left pot of boiled wheat on the stove for an extended period of time. With an eye on their bottom line, John Kellogg decided to try forcing the paste though rollers, hoping for usable sheets of dough.

Instead, it dried into flakes, which were fortunately a big hit among ten Sanitarium’s clientele.

He had accidentally discovered the principally of tempering, which equalizes the moisture throughout the wheat and causes the wheat to flake.

John Kellogg and his younger brother went into full-time packaged flakes cereal production using corn and various other grains. They had a patent for the technique two years later.

Kellogg graduated from Bellevue Medical College in 1875. In 1876, John Harvey became the medical superintendent at the Western Health Reform Institute before change its name to Battle Creek Sanitarium.
John Harvey Kellogg and the invention of breakfast cereals

Sorghum in United States

Sorghum is an important crop species in the United States and around the world. Sorghum is a high biomass grass in the botanical tribe, Andropogoneae. The end uses of sorghum are varied such as cereal grain, forage, syrup and more recently as bioenergy production.

It was suggested that the first sweet sorghum introduction was Chinese Amber which was introduced into the United States from France in 1853. In about 1857, 16 cultivars of sorghum were brought to the United States from Natal.

Early sorghum development in North America involved natural hybridization. Deliberate hybridization followed soon thereafter, with some of the earliest crosses being made in 1914.

The first improved cultivar of sorghum is attributed to H. Willets Smith in 1916 who farmed near Garden City, Kansas. Smith selected uniform strains of sorghum from a chance hybridization of kafir and milo types. This was followed with the development of extensive hybridization programs.

Sorghum ranks fourth among grain crops in the United States, behind maize, soybean and wheat in total production.

Sorghum stems and foliage are used for pasture, green chop or hay, and silage; plant bases are used for fuel for cooking and stems are used o make basket and fish traps.
Sorghum in United States

The early history of corn

Corn (Zea mays L.) is native to the Americas and is their most important cereal crop. Corn originated in Mexico, evolving form the wild grass Teosinte (Zea mays sp. mexicana).

The first people to grow corn were Native Americans living in Mexico’s valley of Tehuacan about6,000 years ago.

Corn becomes symbol of religion and prosperity in The Mayan civilization. From this center corn spread northward to Canada and southward to Argentina.

Christopher Columbus, the European explorer who discovered America, found corn on his trip to the new world in 1492. The corn known to the native as “mahyz.”

Corn is still universally known as maize from the early Spanish translation. Maize was not popular known as corn until the American colonists applied this British term for grain.

Columbus brought corn back to Europe. Portuguese sailors then carried corn to China in 1516. Soon the plant spread by trade to Africa.

Corn played an important role in the colonization and settling of United States. The native Americans taught the colonists how to convert the grain into food and livestock feed.

Bread made from corn quickly became staple foods in the American colonies and other foods, such as mush, porridge and breakfast grits, were important to pioneers migrating west.
The early history of corn

Wheat in ancient history

Historic documents confirm that wheat is the earliest field crop used for human food processing.

In the western part of the Fertile Crescent (Syria, Jordan and Israel) Natufians people in settled communities after 9500 BC on a diet of wild wheat and also barley.

The Chinese cultivated wheat as early as 2700 BC and had developed elaborate rituals to honor it.

Wheat became the leading grain used for human consumption due to its nutritive profile and relatively easy harvesting, storing, transportation and processing, as compared to other grain.

The earliest varieties, grown in Near East, were Triticum monococcum (einkorn) and Triticum dicoccum (emmer). Emmer, which is rather widely regarded as one of the ancestors of today’s wheat, closely resembles a wild species of wheat found in the mountainous area of Syria and Palestine. 

Emmer was a wild grain, not yet completely domesticated, but as early as 7000 BC, the villagers of Jarmo, a Neolithic village of modern Iraq crushed it to make flour.

The main wheat varieties grown today are Triticum aestivum, subspecies vulgare, which is a hexaploid with six groups of seven chromosomes in each group.

This species includes hard red winter, hard red spring, soft red winter, and white wheat.

The importance of cereals in the diet throughout the empire is confirmed by the Prices Edict which gives first place to wheat and followed by other crops. The Romans established their perfected wheat as the predominant grain of the Mediterranean world.

During ancient Egypt, wheat is one of the main cereal crops, grown for making bread.
Wheat in ancient history

History of ancient cereal

Archeobotanical data shows that the first domesticated wheat species were einkorn (Triticum monococcum ssp. monococcum) and emmer (Triticum turgidum ssp, dicoccon). These evolved from their wild relatives T. boeticum and T. dicoccoides about 10 000 years ago.

Both species were the staple food of the human population until the end of the Bronze Age when naked Triticum species became dominant in agriculture lands.

The studies shows comparing ancient human remains (and foodstuffs that surrounded them) from all parts of the globe show that farming practices did not start from one community and spread; instead, these ancient farming communities began independently.

The wild cereal grains abounded and agriculture developed at the hands of Neolithic women who were most likely responsible for the first planting and harvesting of hand-sown crop.

The first recorded farming communities in the ninth millennium BC were found in the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now called Iraq. These farmers were quite sophisticated and were in their way the founders of cereal technology.

They grew wheat and other cereal grains (as well as keeping livestock) and used quite complicated irrigation systems to maintain their crops.

Through the fourth millennium BC during most ancient Egyptians in the Early Dynastic Period and later periods, villages became increasingly dependent on the cultivation of emmer wheat and barley, which was increasingly successful in the environment of the Nile floodplain in Egypt.

In Roman times its cereal exports were of such importance to Italy that the trade enjoyed the peculiar protection of the state and the general imperial system of provincial government received special modifications in its adaptation to Egypt.

Record shows that from 2300 to 1750 BC, wheat, barley, and rice were grown by inhabitants of northern India. In all these ancient societies cereals continued to be among the preferred crops right through to the Egyptians and on to the modern farms of time.

Amaranth the pseudocereal was eaten by hunter-gatherers in both North and South America before the domestication of crops. Amaranth, a pseudocereal, was cultivated first (from 7000 to 5000 BC), but by around 2500 BC maize was first domesticated.

The plants were domesticated independently in the Andes.

Later still, around AD 250 to 1600, maize was hybridized to increase the yields by Maya-Aztec civilization. These people were excellent farmers, who developed methods for tilling dry soil to retain moisture and also built the irrigation canal and made artificial gardens that floated on water.

The agriculture implements used by Inca’s farmers were few and simple. A hoe with a bronze plate was used for general cultivation. The grain were principle staple crops in the higher valleys.

The people of Inca Empire lived in the inhospitable Andes in around AD 1200. They cultivated maize on terraces with intricate irrigation and drainage systems.

History of ancient cereal

History of rolled oats

Rolled oats are made by slicing raw oats into a confetti-like mixture that is steamed and then rolled into flakes and dried.

Oat milling took a great step forward with the invention of a groat-cutting machine by Ehrrichsen in 1877.

Ehrrichsen was employed in an oatmeal mill owned by Ferdinand Schumacher, of Akron, Ohio, who was the known as the oats meal King and later was one of the founders of The Quaker Oats Company.

Schumacher installed new technology in his mills where oats processing to be much less time than whole or steel cuts oats, making them the most effective in the country and began producing a new product – rolled oats.

In this new technique, steel-cut groats were rolled into flakes to form quick cooking oats similar to the most popular cook-up oat cereal of today.

Because most Americans did not eat oats at that time, the Quaker Oats Company decided to launch a major advertising campaign.

The company packed its rolled oats in cardboard boxes bearing the reassuring image of an elderly Quaker and promoted their new product via a national advertising campaign in 1882. It was immediate success upon its introduction in to market.  

History of rolled oats