The Versatile History and Uses of Malt Vinegar

Malt vinegar, a staple in British cuisine, is made from malted barley grains through a fascinating fermentation process. The journey begins with malting, a technique dating back centuries. Barley grains are soaked in water to initiate germination, which activates enzymes that break down starches into fermentable sugars. Once germination has progressed, the grains are dried, halting further growth while retaining the sugars. These sugars are crucial for the next step—fermentation. The barley is brewed into ale, a process where yeast converts sugars into alcohol. Following the production of ale, a secondary fermentation occurs, where bacteria convert the alcohol into acetic acid, the defining component of vinegar. This process creates malt vinegar's distinctive tangy flavor, known for enhancing various dishes.

The vinegar's popularity is closely tied to its iconic role in British fish and chips. It provides a sharp, tangy contrast to the rich, crispy texture of fried fish and the soft, fluffy interior of chips. This combination creates a balance, with the acidity cutting through the oiliness of fried food, refreshing the palate with each bite. While it is most commonly associated with fish and chips, malt vinegar’s culinary range extends far beyond. It is widely used in pickling vegetables, adding depth and complexity to marinades, and offering a piquant touch to salad dressings. Its bold flavor enhances dishes while also serving as a preservative, making it invaluable before the advent of refrigeration. Foods soaked in malt vinegar could last longer, providing sustenance during harsher times.

Aside from its culinary contributions, malt vinegar’s antibacterial properties lend it uses outside the kitchen. Historically, it was employed as a cleaning agent and even for medicinal purposes, such as treating minor ailments and cleaning wounds. Its ability to kill bacteria is still appreciated today, making it a multipurpose household item. Malt vinegar’s rich history and enduring utility make it a cherished staple in homes worldwide.
The Versatile History and Uses of Malt Vinegar

From Ancient Cultivation to Modern Staple: The Journey of Oats

Oats, one of the first cereals cultivated by humans, have a rich history dating back to ancient China around 7000 BC. The Greeks are credited with being the first to prepare porridge from oats. However, it was the Romans who spread oats across Western Europe and named them "cereals" after Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture.

Today, numerous varieties of oats have evolved from the original Asian wild grass, Avena fatua. The highest quality oats thrive in regions with light, fertile soil, temperate climates, and annual rainfall exceeding 60 cm (24 inches). Oat grains are typically sown in the winter and ripened under the summer sun, with harvesting occurring in autumn once the grains are fully mature.

Oats can be easily distinguished from other grain crops such as wheat and barley by their unique appearance. The grains cluster in formations known as "panicles" on tall, graceful stems, typically reaching about 90 cm (3 feet) in height. Each stem generally bears around twenty to twenty-five grains. These panicles usually contain two or three grains each, each encased in an outer husk that provides protection until the grains reach the mill.

The harvested oat grains are then used to produce oatmeal and various oat-based products. Oats are valued not only for their nutritional benefits, including high fiber content and heart-healthy properties, but also for their versatility in culinary applications. From traditional porridge to modern oat-based snacks and beverages, oats have maintained their status as a staple in diets worldwide.

Recent advancements in agricultural technology have further optimized oat cultivation, ensuring higher yields and better quality grains. The growing awareness of the health benefits of oats has spurred an increase in their consumption, making them an essential component of healthy diets globally. As a result, oats continue to play a significant role in both historical and contemporary food landscapes.
From Ancient Cultivation to Modern Staple: The Journey of Oats

History of popcorn grain

Corn began as a wild grass called teosinte in southwestern Mexico and was probably cultivated as a domesticated crop around 9,000 years ago.

Scholars agree that popcorn originated in the Americas. Popcorn grains estimated to be more than 1,000 years old were found on the east coast of Peru. A 1,000-year-old popped kernel was found in a dry cave inhabited by predecessors of the Pueblo Indians in Southwestern Utah.

In 1948, small heads of the zea mays everta were discovered by Herbert Dick and Earle Smith in a dry cave known as the “bat cave.” These kernels have since been carbon dated and shown to be approximately 5,600 years old. Strains of corn (taxonomized as Zea mays) are cultivated specifically as popping corns. The Zea mays variety everta, a special kind of flint corn, is the most common of these.

Around the year 1612, early French explorers through the Great Lakes region noted that the Iroquois popped popcorn with heated sand in a pottery vessel and used it to make popcorn soup, among other things.

In the mid-1800s, the steel plow—which could cut through tough vegetation—transformed Midwestern agriculture. In Nebraska, Iowa, and Indiana, corn—especially the poppable variety—became such an important cash crop that it was dubbed “prairie gold.”

In 1875, a Kentucky resident named Frederick J. Myers patented a corn-popping device that added a stay-cool handle. Charles Cretor of Chicago is often credited as the inventor of modern popcorn, thanks to his invention of the mobile popcorn cart in 1885. Since the machine was mobile, the invention also increased the amount of people who had access to popcorn and thus the popularity of the snack in America.

Popcorn’s modern era as a favorite American snack was launched in 1893 at the New York World’s Fair. Street vendors, by the 1920s, with their steam or gas-powered poppers, were a common sight at fairs, parks and expositions.

The first hybrid popcorn for commercial production, Minhybrid 250, was released in 1934 by the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station. It only grew well along the northern edge of the U.S. corn belt, but was quickly followed by hybrids adapted to the central region of the corn belt.

By the 1940s, more widely adapted hybrids had been developed by Indiana and Kansas Agricultural Experiment Stations in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Plant Industry. Modern plant breeders, concentrated in the heart of the U.S. Corn Belt, continue their quest to develop improved popcorn hybrids.

When popcorn was first sold inside movie theaters, almost 100 years ago, it actually helped buoy the business, which was flailing at the time as the country entered the Great Depression. A successful popcorn advertising partnership with Coca-Cola and Morton Salt, along with advertisements of individual popcorn companies made the early 1950s the largest home-consumption growth period for the popcorn industry.
History of popcorn grain

The early history of breakfast cereal in America

The term "cereal" has its origins in Ceres, the ancient Roman goddess associated with harvest. Cereals have been a vital part of human diets since the Neolithic era when the cultivation of wild grains marked the beginning of agriculture.

Around 7000 B.C., people in the Middle East began cultivating the first cereals, such as wheat and barley. Cereal-based breakfast foods have since become a popular choice for morning meals. Porridge or gruel, which involves cooking grains in water or milk, represents the earliest form of cereal. The tradition of eating breakfast can be traced back to the Neolithic period when people used large stones to grind grains and create a porridge-like dish. Roman soldiers also relied on a porridge known as pulmentus as a regular component of their diets.

Breakfast cereals are categorized as processed foods due to the various stages involved in their production.

During the Middle Ages, beer made from barley and hops was served to hungry peasants in the morning, often accompanied by oatcakes or porridge.

After their arrival in America, New England colonists adopted a porridge called samp, which Native American language scholar Roger Williams described as "the Indian corne, beaten and boiled and eaten hot or cold with milk or butter." Samp proved to be a highly nutritious dish enjoyed by English settlers.

During the American Civil War, Union soldiers greatly valued hot breakfast cereals, particularly when they were on the move or faced limited access to supply trains.

During those times, cooks made use of available ingredients to prepare panada, a beloved hot breakfast gruel also known as "bully soup." Watery cornmeal and crumbled hardtack, which were commonly distributed rations, formed the main components of this dish.

Another variation of cornmeal porridge involved boiling stale cornbread. Cush-cush, a specialty in Louisiana, became a standard camp meal for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.

The development of precooked breakfast foods initially aimed to offer vegetarians greater dietary variety.

In the nineteenth-century United States, a health food movement emerged, particularly among followers of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, who embraced a vegetarian lifestyle.

During that period, a significant portion of the American population struggled to consume sufficient dietary fiber, leading to various digestive disorders.
The early history of breakfast cereal in America

Domestication of rice in Yangtze Basin

Rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the most important crops in the world and it was most likely part of the diet as far back as 15,000 years BP. Prehistorical agriculture in China can be primarily divided into two major cultural areas based on the main crop types. Taking the Qinling Mountains - Huaihe River Line as an approximate boundary, to the north is millet agriculture along the Yellow River, and to the south is rice paddy agriculture along the Yangtze River.

Archeologists have found evidence that rice was an important the Yangtze Basin in the late Neolithic period. The Lower Yangtze River is densely distributed with Neolithic sites and is widely regarded as a core area where rice agriculture originated.

These cultural sequences comprise the Shangshan (11,000-8500 BP), Kuhuqiao (8000 7400 BP), Majiabang (7000-6000 BP), and Hemudu Culture (7000-5300 BP) during the early to middle Holocene.

The Neolithic site at Hemudu is the most significant when early rice cultivation is concerned. The Hemudu culture is the most significant Neolithic culture in southern China. The Hemudu culture flourished at south Hangzhou Bay in Yuyao city, Zhejiang Province, and was discovered in 1973.

The Hemudu culture is the most significant Neolithic culture and is identified by its distinct style of pile dwellings and rice remains in southern China, which are distributed primarily in the eastern coastal area and divided into two main periods with a remarkable interruption and dispersal around 6000 BP.

The Majiabang culture coexisted with the Hemudu culture for about two thousand years as two separate and distinct cultures, with cultural transmissions between them. Majiabang people cultivated rice.

Development of irrigation technology to construct flooded farms gave strong bases for stable rice-cultivating society, which in the end formulated the rise of ancient kingdoms of Yue and Wu in China in BC 6th -5th centuries. They were direct descendants of those people who had developed the unique rice cultivation from the era of Hemudu culture.
Domestication of rice in Yangtze Basin

General history of barley

Barley cultivation probably originated in the highlands of Ethiopia and in Southeast Asia in prehistoric times. It is believed to extend back to 5000 BC in Egypt, 3500 BC in Mesopotamia, 3000 BC in north-western Europe, and 2000 BC in China. Barley was grown on the Korean Peninsula by 1500-850 BC along with millet, wheat, and legumes. Six-rowed barley did not come about until after 6000 BC.

Barley played an important role in ancient Greek and Roman cultures as a staple bread-making grain as well as an important food for athletes. Gladiators were known as Hordearii, meaning ‘eaters of barley’. The use of barley grains in social and religious ceremonies by Hindus, Greeks and Romans illustrates its antiquity.

The first barley foods probably were simple. The kernels were eaten raw until the discovery that removal of the hulls of hulled types followed by soaking and/or cooking in some manner enhanced the texture and flavor.

In ancient Egypt (3200 BC to 30 BC) barley bread and beer (made from malt) constituted a complete diet. A clay tablet from ancient Sumer in Lower Mesopotamia dating from around 2700 BC provides a prescription for a poultice that includes dried powdered herbs and fruit blended with barley ale and oil.

Barley was the chief bread plant of the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans and of much of Europe through the 16th century.

In New World, barley, together with other English grains, was grown in 1602 by Gosnold on Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands off the south coast of Massachusetts, and by the colonists of the London Company in Virginia in 1611.

Barley was first grown in Mexico and was introduced there by the Spanish conquerors.

Today, barley is the fourth largest grain crop after wheat, rice and corn. It is still grown in many different countries throughout the world.
General history of barley

Graham crackers

Graham crackers have always been fairly low in fat, usually with less than 3 grams of fat each. Graham crackers were invented around 1830. Minister named Sylvester Graham wanted people to eat healthier foods.

He toured the country giving lectures on the merits of eating coarse whole grain breads and abstaining from fats and meat.

He did not think that people should eat meat or white bread. He wanted people to eat more fruits and vegetables and wheat breads that were brown instead of white. Graham crackers were named after Sylvester Graham.

During the late 1820s and early 1839s, Sylvester Graham launched America’s first culinary revolution the importance of coarsely milled, unbolted, whole wheat flour. Recipes for so-called Graham crackers made from this flour appeared in cookbooks during the nineteenth century.

During the 1850s Graham cracker was probably first manufactured by Russell Thacher Trall, a follower of Sylvester Graham and the author of the New Hydropathic Cookbook in 1854. The National Biscuits Company was the first national manufacturer of Graham Crackers in 1898.
Graham crackers

History of wheat in North America

In 1493, Christopher Columbus brought wheat to the Caribbean though the islands have never been large wheat producers.

It was until the first permanent European colonies were successful in the 1600s, that wheat began to be grown on a large scale.

In 1521, the Spanish introduced wheat to Mexico, which by 1735 was exporting the cereal to the West Indies. In 1620, the Pilgrims introduce wheat to Massachusetts, though the colony, like the Caribbean was ill suited to its culture.

Wheat was so highly valued that during times of scarcity, residents of the New Netherlands were forbidden from trading it with Native Americans so that the precious stale could be reserved for European consumption.

The long harsh winters in eastern North America made growing wheat more difficult that it was in the more temperate parts of Europe.

In the 1620s, and 1630s, colonist grew spring wheat and by 1624 they harvested a surplus of grain. In 1664, however, disease claimed the crop, spurring colonists to try winter wheat instead. By 1839, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa were producing a quarter of the nation’s wheat and corn. Just before the Civil war began, the production of these states had soared to half the national total, while wheat production along the Atlantic coast tumbled from 69 percent in 1840 to 39 percent by 1860.

As early as 1841, farmers grew durum in Montana, and in 1864 Russian immigrants introduce it to North Dakota, where it remains an important crop.

American wheat production underwent revolutionary changes during the 19th and early 20th centuries as a progression of mechanical innovations transformed the wheat harvest and made the United States the undisputed world leader in farm mechanization.
History of wheat in North America

Shredded wheat

Shredded wheat one of the oldest mass-produced breakfast cereals, is still an important product. Soft white wheat is the primary grain used.

Other classes of wheat, as well as other cereal grains such as rice, corn, or oats or mixtures thereof, can also be used to make shredded products.

Shredded wheat was patented in 1893 by Henry D. Perky of Colorado and William Ford of Watertown, New York. The year before Henry Perky traveled to Watertown, New York, to work with an air-brake designer named William Ford on corn cereal, but discovered instead a process for pressing wheat into shreds that could be formed into biscuits.

These he called shredded wheat and he returned to Denver to open a bakery and restaurant and to sell the item door to door by wagon.

During shredding, wheat is cooked until the entire endosperm is translucent. After cooking and cooling, the grain is held for about 24 hours.

The wheat is the squeezed between two rollers, one of which is grooved. Multiple sets of roller are used to lay down multiple layers of shreds. The shreds are then cut into biscuits and bake.
Shredded wheat 

History of oats in Middle East

Oats known today were probably cultivated from wild oats by farmers in the Middle East and Europe around 4500 years ago. Oats may have appeared as weeds in wheat and barley field in the Middle East.

Some archeologists determined that one of the first oat harvests was in the Middle Eastern region of the Mediterranean Sea, for reason of rich soil and ease of access to water for irrigation.

Some of the first evidence of oats was found in ancient Egypt. The history of oats is somewhat clouded because there are so many different species and subspecies, which makes identification of old remains very difficult.

Oats appear to have been domesticated from the world grasses native to the mountainous are running from the southern border of Turkey of the Soviet Union with Afghanistan. Oats are better able to withstand harsh growing conditions than wheat and barley. This made oats a valuable grain for feeding the poor who live in disadvantage regions.

The chief modern center of greatest variety of forms is in Asia Minor where most all subspecies are in contact with each other. Many feel that the area with the greatest diversity of types is most likely where a particular plant originated. Historians suggested that oat culture expanded to the north from its Asia Minor centre of origin as a weed mixture in cultivated emmer and einkorn, which are less adapted to northern latitudes than oats and died out while oats thrived in the new environment.
History of oats in Middle East

Wheat product: bagel

Bagels are a doughnut-shaped yeast roll with a dense, chewy texture and shiny crust. It is also fine grained.

The long standing myth is the bagel was created by a local baker to celebrate the victory of Poland’s King Jan III Sobiesky over the Ottoman Turks in 1683, and was given the trade name of buegel.

The bagels are boiled in water before they are baked. It will them characteristics firm, chewy interior. Industrial bagels may not be boiled and may have a soft crumb.

The hole made the bagel easy to transport, slipping it on a rod or a rope – the way that it was thought to be originally carried. Although plain bagels are popular, many bagel bakeries make plain, poppy seed, sesame seed, garlic, onion, cinnamon raisin, egg, salt, everything bagels and so on.

The traditional way to enjoy a bagel is with lox or smoked salmon and cream cheese.

Bagels came to America in the late 19th century along with Eastern European immigrants. The bagel was modified in America to its present form, which is generally thicker than its European antecedents.
Wheat product: bagel

History of flaked cereal breakfast

In 1894, flaked breakfast cereal was accidently invented by Seventh Day Adventist Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.

He and his younger brother Will Kellogg found a new way of processing corn: they steamed and soften the kernels, added flavorings and then flattened it by feeding it through two steel rollers. The resulting flakes were then baked in an oven.

It dried into flakes, which were fortunately a big hit among the Sanitarium’s clientele. Dr. Kellogg named their first successful wheat flakes product Granose Flakes.

Two years later they had a patent for the technique and began selling Sanitas Toasted Corn Flakes in 1898.

Will Kellogg developed the product into a great commercial success, in part by adding sugar to the malt and corn combination from which he made the flakes.

In 1895 Charles W. Post introduced Postum Cereal Coffee. In 1898 Grape Nuts was put on the market, Post, using a similar process of flaking as the Kellogg brothers in 1906 introduced his flaked corn.

Another important person in the history of the breakfast cereal industry is C.C Washburn, who began a flour mill in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

He formed the General Mills Company. He introduced a wheat flake that became Wheaties in the 1920s, and is still popular today.
History of flaked cereal breakfast 

Ancient history of barley

Archeological evidence indicates that the wild barley was growing in the ancient past in Fertile Crescent 35,000 – 40,000 years ago.

About 9000 BC, the Natufians, who had a Mesolithic culture, gathered and used wild grains.

The Egyptians have a tradition that barley was the first of the cereal mad use by a man and trace its introduction to their goddess Isis.

Sumerian clay tablets described and recommended cultural practices for raising barley around 1700 BC. Barley was an important crop throughout the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age.

It is one of ancient crops in India. It was widely consumed as human food and horse feed in early time, particularly by Aryans.

According to experts, six rowed barley which was being grown in the Indus Valley at Mahenjo-daro and Harappa by about 2500 BC, was almost certainly introduced for Mesopotamia.

In Europe, as early as 3000 BC, barley was a stable food utilized in various types of breads and cakes throughout Europe, especially in the British Isles and Scandinavian.

Barley remained a stable ingredient in porridges along with peas and oats in the British Isles but often was the only cereal ingredient in Scandinavian porridge and stew recipes up until early in the twentieth century. 

Barley was first grown in North America in 1492 by a colony founded by Columbus. Spaniards introduced barley into Mexico during the conquest, and from there it was introduced by missionaries into California.
Ancient history of barley

Short history of rye

The precise origin of rye domestication is unknown, but it was being cultivated at several locations in the Eastern Turkey and Armenia by 6000 BC.

The earliest sign of rye, associated with agriculture comes from central Anatolia. Rye is a typical ‘secondary crop’: it was primarily a weed in wheat and barley fields, later adopted as a crop.

Rye arrived in Europe through the Aegean Basin and the south Balkan as a cultivated crop by 4000 BC. Probably a cultivated crop in the Early Iron Age, is found in Roman Britain in both the highland and lowland zones, but not with great frequency.

Because of its tough constitution, it may have performed better than wheat and barley in the cooler, nutrient poor northern climates and therefore attracted human attraction.

It spread in the Roman Empire was a late phenomenon. In Sweden, the cultivation of rye increased in the Middle Ages, partly because it was favored by the Church and the Crown. However, it was restricted to the provinces Lake Malaren and the adjoining regions to the south east.

In modern times, tetraploid and hexaploid wheat have been artificially hybridized with rye to form the new crop called Triticale.
Short history of rye 

Corn during ancient Mesoamerican

The word maiz is thought to be derived from mahiz, which may be the Taino word for corn, or Aztec word for ‘our life’.

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 domestication of several agricultural plants began before 6500 BC and was flourishing by 2000 BC in numerous areas within and beyond the Basin of Mexico.

The first people to grow corn were Native Americans living in Mexico’s valley of Tehuacan about 6,000 years ago before spread southward throughout Mesoamerica and the South American continent. The early wild corn found in the Tehuacan is chapalote.

They held elaborate ceremonies when planting and harvesting corn and used corn patterns to decorate pottery, sculpture, and other art.

When the first wild maize plants cross-pollinated with another wild grass, they had only small heads of grain. Over time, wild maize became cross pollinated with another kind of grass.  When the American Indians first began to cultivate corn, perhaps it was a already a hybrid.

For the Maya, maize was the foundation of their existence and the maize god was the father of world creation. For them, life was not possible without maize.

Maize was the nutritional foundation of their diet. The Aztec nobility ate corn as round flat breads know as tlaxcalli, which varied in size, color and thickness. The tlaxcalli was steamed under cloth or on a hot surface and served open or folded.

Maize was unknown in Europe prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1492. By that time, Native Amerindians cultivated maize over much of the tropical and temperate portions of the western hemisphere from southern Canada to south central Chile.
Corn during ancient Mesoamerican

Modern History of Breakfast Cereal

During the American Civil War, Union soldiers were glad to get a hot breakfast cereals, especially when they were in the march or cut off from supply trains.

Cooks used foodstuff on hand to make, panada, a hot breakfast gruel affectionately known as ‘bully soup,’ which the main ingredients were watery corn meal and crumbled hardtack, both of which were standard issue.

The early history of cereal breakfast originated out of the an interest in health foods that can be traced to the 1830s, and specifically to the experiments carried out from the the 1860s by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the pioneer nutritionist, at the sanitarium at Battle Creek, Michigan.

The modern breakfast cereals, however, are entirely precooked and eaten in cold milk. The first precooked cereal was probably invented in 1863 by Dr. James C. Jackson at Dansville, New York.

Jackson named his invention as granula.

Ganula, was the first cold breakfast cereal. It consisted id a twice baked wholemeal biscuit ground into crumbs, which had to be soaked on milk or water to make it even vaguely palatable.

In 1877, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg 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.

In 1894 Kellogg created the first flaked cereal, Granose and in 1898, the corn flake.

Eventually, however, competition resulted in the addition of sugar and other food additives and in marketing campaigns directed at children, such as the inclusion of a premium or toy in the box.

By late 1905, the corn flake business was booming and other cereal manufacturers had gotten into this line. In January 1906, Post Cereals introduced a new version of the corn flakes.

It was C. W Post, the founder of Post Cereals who first clearly comprehend that convenience and flavor were more forceful and more widely appreciated advantages than were the healthfulness and vegetable origin previously relied upon as selling points by producers of these foods.

Now over 75% of breakfast cereals are ready to eat type made from wheat, corn, or oats .
Modern History of Breakfast Cereal

Grain storage during ancient Egypt

Storage is the intermediate stage between cereal production and processing and its distribution and consumption.

By ancient Egypt times grain storage and progress from the simple family store to large state-run systems.

The dry climate of Egypt would have indeed allowed farmers to bulk process their harvest communally to the clean grain stage prior storage.

Even without the sophisticated equipment that is available today, grain storage proved remarkably non-problematical in ancient Egypt, although infestation was always a potential problem.

Some of these have been excavated: they were made of dried clay bricks or baked bricks and had domed roofs.

It was the system that was almost certainly used by Joseph, he gathered in the grain of the seven good years before the seven famine years and thus with careful rationing, prevented starvation.

At that time the system was highly organized, hierarchal system of grain storage, which for the most part was successful in feeding population, even during the lean years.

Grain was stored at national, regional, local and household levels.

The state would have to collect and manage surpluses and meet local as well as central needs in case of any difficulty.

Archeological evidence indicates that large storage facilities were attached to temples and palaces.
Grain storage during ancient Egypt

Milling of Cereal

The objective of cereal milling is to remove the bran and germ from the seed and to free the endosperm. This left whole as in rice milling, ground into coarse pieces (wheat semolina, maize grits) or milled into flour.

Since prehistoric times up to the middle of the 19th century, cereal grains were ground in small mills, driven by hand, wind or water power.

The process of milling wheat into flour was revolutionized around 800 BC in Mesopotamia, when animal, water and wind power were harnessed for the first time to run the large stones used for grinding.

In ancient Rome the mill and the bakery were the very same enterprise. The grain were milled and worked up without delay to dough and bread.

The flour ground in such a mill was whole grain flour, because the complete cereal grains poured into the mill on top, came out out as flour at the bottom.

Probably the most ancient technique involves the grinder rocking backwards and forwards while grasping an ellipsoid stone in both hands which crushes the grain within a larger concave stone suits in front of the grinder.

Both upper and lower stone are usually made from a hard igneous rock such as granite or basalt to avoid the production of stone in the grinding process.

Around the Mediterranean and possibly also in China during the first half of the first millennium BC, there were two sophisticated versions of the handmill the hopper-rubber and the lever mill.

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

This machine became the heart of what is known as the gradual reduction system, commonly used.
Milling of Cereal

History of Cornmeal

The most traditional American food may well be cornmeal. Cornmeal began as a Native American staple. It was domesticated by Native Americans in about 5000 BC and since then has occupied a central role in their nutrition, religion and ritual.

The earliest archeological specimens of maize are from Puebla, Mexico and dated from 5500 years ago. But the physical resemblance to its wild ancestor is slight.

They ground the corn kernels into cornmeal and mixed it with salt and water. Then they baked it. This recipe was introduced to the early colonists, who experimented with it and developed their own uses for cornmeal.

Colonists of Americas used corn as money and even traded corn for marriage licenses.

Indigenous cooks of Mesoamerica and the Southwest ground corn, or maize by rubbing a handheld stone that the Spaniards would later called a ‘manojh.’

Unlike modern cornmeal eaten in North America today, this had been soaked in a mixture of water and ashes or ground limestone, so it was more like grits or hominy grits.

The Aztec emperor chose form among 30 dishes for his dinner each day. The ordinary citizen, however was sustained primarily by maize and beans a perfect protein complex.

After ground and mixed with water to make cornmeal, the maize was consumed as a thick gruel called atole or was cooked with various ingredient – beans and chile peppers for tamales, or patted into flat maize cakes called tortillas.

Cornmeal was also used as the basis for poultices, as well as being infused and drunk for stomach problems. A gruel made form cornmeal is used by the mayo for treating diarrhea.

Spanish colonial cooks made a stiff dough of cornmeal, water and salt that they patted out on a board or griddle and baked over or in front of the fire to make a kind of bread that they called bannock, hoecake, or sometimes johnnycake, a name that came from the word “joniken”.
History of Cornmeal

History of Rye

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.

Even though the grain was domesticated later than wheat, barley and its, there is more uncertainty about the history of rye than there is about some of the other cereal grains.

Some authorities believe it developed from Secale montanum Gus., a perennial weed that grows wild southern Europe and Central Asia.

It was probably was first grown as a separate crop (i.e., not in mix plantings) in southwestern Asia sometime around 1,000 BC.

It was never an important grain in this area in ancient times, but 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.

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.
History of Rye