2 December 2024
Organic soft wheat flours are the most common; a journey from the Egyptians to the Romans and up to the present day presented by the program supported by ITALMOPA to promote organic wheat and semolina flour in the USA.
The most widely used organic flour in the world is certainly soft wheat flour, which can be used for anything from bread to focaccia and pizza. Flour mills usually mix different varieties of wheat to obtain flours with the qualities they desire. Soft wheat flours are classified as 00, 0, 1, 2 and wholewheat. Durum wheat flours are called semolina flours and include semolina flour, wholewheat semolina and re-milled semolina. Flour has been produced since prehistoric times: the first rudimentary methods ground the wheat grains between stones and for many centuries this process was carried out using basic tools similar to a pestle and mortar. This method evolved into millstones used in the Middle Ages. Increasingly advanced techniques, such as windmills and later steam-driven roller mills, led to industrial-scale flour production: wheat was ground into increasingly finer flours giving us the high-quality product we know today.
But who invented flour? “Pure Flour from Europe”, the project supported by ITALMOPA (the Italian Milling Industry Association) and co-financed by the European Union, which promotes the consumption and export of Made in Europe organic soft wheat and durum wheat flours and semolina flours to the USA and Canada can answer the question. There are several hypotheses, as many as the peoples we can trace their origins back to: Egyptians, Sumerians, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, through to the people of the Gargano area in Italy. According to a recent discovery, the first flour in history was made 30,000 years ago, and the first bread prepared by modern man was a flatbread baked on red-hot stones. The traces of this were discovered in Italy, in Tuscany in the 1990s. Until this extraordinary discovery, it was thought modern man had learned how to make flour 18,000 years ago. In truth, we have to go even further back to the period immediately following Neanderthal man. It has been found that the Neanderthals, in addition to meat, also ate a type of highly nutritious bread, rich in carbohydrates, which was easy to store and transport. It was also discovered that the use of cereals started in Europe and not in the Middle East. According to some historical sources, the invention of flour can be attributed to the populations of Asia Minor, who began to cultivate grains which they then brought to Europe.
What is the etymology of the word “flour”? It derives from the Latin “farina-fainae“, which originates from “far” or “farro“, the Italian word for spelt, dating back to the ancient Romans, who used this cereal to make a nutritious powder used in a variety of food preparations. At first, they used flours to make “puls“, the staple food before bread appeared. “Puls” consisted of a spelt or broad bean polenta, which has never disappeared and remains a cheap, popular food. About 1700 years later, with the first contact with America, corn and its flour were brought back to Europe, from which the polenta we know today originates: polenta is what remains of the Roman “puls” in the Italian culinary tradition.
Sayings about flour: There are many proverbs and sayings in Italy. For example: “That’s not flour from his sack” is said of someone who passes off some work or someone else’s idea as his own; “It’s not straightforward flour”, which is said about a person or words which are insincere; “Talking
doesn’t produce flour”, used when too much talk is inconclusive; “The devil’s flour turns to bran”, meaning what is acquired with fraud or deception will not end well; “When God gives flour, the devil takes away the sack”, which means it is difficult, if not impossible, to have everything. And we say “That’s flour from a different sack” meaning we are completely different!
The cultivation of wheat, and cereals in general, has spread over time all over the planet, and today cereals are the staple food in the diet of many populations around the world. Wheat flour and semolina flour have distinct uses which divides them into two macro categories: the first is more versatile, excellent for making bread, cakes, biscuits, pizzas, focaccia and fresh pasta, but also as a thickener in sauces and creams, while the second is the undisputed king of packaged dry pasta or breads typical of southern Italy.