History of Flour Milling

When wheat began to be cultivated and not just gathered, people began to develop ways to grind more grain at one time. At first, a couple of good stones were used. Then sloping or saddle stones or a simple mortar and pestle were used. This was very physical labor as it took several hours to grind enough grain for just one meal. The coarsely ground grain also wore down people's teeth. The flour would contain powdered bits of stone as well as the grain.

Sieves, used to separate flour from coarse pieces of grain, were made from woven grass around 6,000 B.C. Even with pottery for cooking, which helped make the grain easier to eat, stone ground wheat still took a toll on teeth.

Early mills used two horizontal, disk-shaped stones that rubbed, and later turned, against each other. Grain was poured between the two stones and a sliding or turning action was used to grind the grain. This was called the hand-powered quern. There were grooves in the bottom stone that channeled the flour out the sides of the stones.

Millstones, two large stones that were turned against each other, developed next. Some mills used slave labor or other human labor to turn the stones. Horses, oxen, and then water and wind were used to turn the top millstone against the bottom stone, with the grain being fed in between the stones. The Romans are believed to be the first to use waterpower for milling flour around 100 B.C.

Windmills were developed much later--in France in 1180 A.D., in England in 1185 A.D., and in Syria in 1190 A.D. Wooden blades later replaced sails of stretched cloth. The wind powered the main drive wheel, which turned the top stone against the stationary bottom stone.

Development of water-driven and wind-driven mills changed agriculture. Building a mill was quite expensive so the mills were usually owned by a landlord, the church, or royalty. Each farmer who brought grain to the mill paid a fee or toll, usually one-sixteenth of the grain milled.

In Europe, many of the smaller querns were destroyed in an effort to force people to use the king's or church's official mill. This also forced families to buy flour, rather than being able to produce a small quantity for their own use.

Hand milling was a necessity for the earliest American colonists. However, by 1642, commercial milling was made viable by increases in grain production. Wind was the primary source of power for the early American mills but water mills became more common as settlers moved westward. Early milling investors included Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

In those days, grain was simply ground as it came and used at it came out. That changed as developments in manufacturing led to the automation of milling. Flour milling was the first fully automated manufacturing process. American inventor and millwright Oliver Evans is credited with implementing the automation of flour milling in 1785. In fact, Evans granted a license to use his mill improvements to Thomas Jefferson in 1808. By 1870, mills required less than 3 employees. In the United States, water powered two-thirds of all the mills at that time while steam powered the rest.

By 1878, the millstones were being replaced with two corrugated cylindrical steel rollers. These rollers were a cost-saver and they also produced cleaner, more uniform flour. Another important development in flour milling was the middlings purifier, developed in Minnesota in 1865. The middlings purifier allowed the miller to mill more flour from the same grain. This was important to the miller since the miller's largest profit was in the sale of flour, rather than feed or the parts of the wheat that aren't flour.

In 1873, there were 23,000 mills of all kinds (wheat, corn, rye, and feed) in the United States. By 1993, there were 205 wheat flour and durum mills in the United States. However, milling capacity has continued to increase as existing mills expand production. Computerization, better transportation, and improved equipment continue to assist in meeting the need for flour.

Kansas consistently ranks 1st among the 50 states in both wheat flour milled and wheat flour milling capacity.