32 The Milling of Wheal in the Ignited Kingdom. 



we know, at any rate, that we are enjoined to i)ut the semolina 

 into the 80 per cent, tlour. Wliat is semolina ? A grocer 

 regards it as a granular product entirely free from flour, which 

 he sells to housewives for making puddings. Nuttall's definition 

 of semolina is " a substance consisting of grains found in certain 

 wheats too hard to crush into flour, and too coarse to pass 

 through the sieve in the bolting." He indicates that the origin 

 of the word is Italian. The term has become current in British 

 milling technology in recent years only. Nuttall's definition 

 applies to the older iise of the term, not to our modern one. 

 In certain districts of the world, for various reasons, " Durum " 

 wheat is grown in preference to varieties of the " Ordinary " 

 type. The former is eminently unsuitable for millstone milling. 

 It was impossible to reduce by millstones the endosperm to the 

 fine powder known as flour without simultaneously reducing 

 the bran to a fine powder also. Indeed, it was diflBcult to reduce 

 the endosperm to flour at all by the older methods of milling. 

 So the miller usually did not try to do so, but from such wheats 

 produced the granular product known as semolina, and left the 

 cook to reduce it to a soft digestible state ])y the aid of water 

 in cooking. Modern developments of milling enable the miller 

 to make good flour from Durum wheats, but that is no part of 

 my present story, except in so far as it indicates that such 

 modern developments are good. 



The millstone, good tool though it was when put to work 

 on suitable material, did not at one operation reduce the wheat 

 to flour and "ofi^al." There was an intermediate granular 

 product consisting of endosperm and husk particles mixed 

 together in varying proportions. This was known as middlings 

 or by some local name. If again ground on millstones, it 

 yielded flour very dark in colour and of a commercially low 

 value, so not infrequently it was sold in its unfinished state for 

 pigs' food or for making cheap biscuits. The quality of a 

 " stoneman's " work was tested to a great extent by the quantity 

 of this product produced in grinding, and to keep that as small 

 as possible it was necessary to grind a relatively small quantity 

 of wheat per pair of stones per hour. But in spite of all such 

 precautions, the percentage of " middlings " was very greatly 

 increased when harder foreign wheats were imported from the 

 new sources of supply ; and the miller produced from the first 

 grinding not only flour of lower commercial value, but a much 

 larger pi-oportion of this intermediate product. Then "purifi- 

 cation," as it is called, was introduced, a process of separation 

 according to specific gravity, by regulated wind currents, and 

 by means of this process particles of pure husk, similar in size 

 to the particles of pure endosperm, could be extracted by reason 

 of their low specific gravity. 



