Flour Mill Installation Scunthorpe
Installation of High Quality Flour Mills, Scunthorpe
When you buy a loaf of bread, you are probably just looking forward to sinking your teeth into a delicious sandwich. How the bread was created will almost certainly be the last thing on your mind as you hurry home from the shops. But there has been a pretty involved and complex process in the production of that loaf which may interest you. Bread, and a whole lot of other food items is of course made using flour. The flour will have been processed in one of the many UK flour mills in places like Scunthorpe, Bradford and Manchester.
Do We Need Flour Mills?
Flour is essential for a vast range of food items like bread, buns, cakes, biscuits, pizza, waffles, pancakes, muffins…..the list is endless. As you know this flour is sourced from wheat grains which are then processed. This is where flour mills come in, and where all the action happens using a network of processing plant equipment. It isn’t all that different to what happened thousands of years ago, where basically grain is converted into flour. Roughly 650 million tonnes of wheat is produced per year worldwide, that’s a lot of loaves!
High Performance Flour Mill Processing Plants
Before they can end up as the soft fine flour we know, grains must be pulverized in a flour mill. Firstly, impurities need to be removed, which involves thoroughly sieving and washing the grains. This gets rid of nasty things like particles of dust, weed seeds and stones, then a second process removes items weighing less than a wheat grain. Steel rollers grind the grain which is then sifted, and this milling process is repeat over and over to produce different grades of flour.
White flour is produced by the soft inner part of the kernel [or the endosperm], after removal of the outer cover [or bran] and seed [or germ]. There are three types of white wheat flour, including:
- Bread flour which has a high percentage of protein, allowing it to rise well and bake to a good, firm texture.
- Cake flour that has a more crumbly texture due to lower protein levels.
- All purpose flour, a medium protein flour suitable for both bread and cakes.
Professional Flour Mill Installation & Maintenance Service in Scunthorpe
At the end of the process the flour mill will have produced three main products, these are:
- White flour – widely used for bread, cakes etc
- Bran – ideal for baking, cereals and animal feed
- Wheatgerm – used by the health food market
Any by products left over are utilised also as livestock feed.
The flour is tested to ascertain quality by being baked as various items such as bread, biscuits etc. There are considerations like exact size of product after baking, as if sizes differ, items may not fit into their specific packaging.
Vitamins and minerals including calcium carbonate, iron, thiamine/Vitamin B1 and Nicotinic acid are then added to white flour before it is packaged. This is a government requirement and has been the case for over 60 years. It is because white flour should have the same nutritional value as wholemeal flour. Commercial bakeries, supermarkets and restaurants receive the bagged flour, while bulk deliveries are made to large industrial bakeries.
Process Plant Contractors with Knowledge & Experience, Scunthorpe
The performance of a flour mill is assessed by stringently testing the quality of the flour it produces. Apart from quality, these crucial tests ensure that there is no contamination and that the flour is safe for human consumption. For a reliable result, the tests conducted need to be accurate, consistent and repeated. This is a pretty complex business, and to avoid random outcomes, automation is preferred. Mistakes in this area can cause chaos for the miller, so attention to detail is essential.
As you can see there is a lot to the production of flour, and the integrity of the processing equipment is tantamount to each flour mill’s success.