Refined Flour
The earliest bread grains would have been ground by hand with rocks. This would have resulted in coarse, whole grain bread—the descendants of which are dark, rustic breads from Europe, like pumpernickel. The Mesopotamians refined this process around 800 B.C., using two flat, circular stones, stacked on top one another to grind the grain. These stones were continuously rotated by draft animals or slaves. This “milling”—which was the genesis for how we create flour today–created smooth, finely ground flour that quickly became prized as a status symbol. The desire for the whitest, most refined bread continued through the modern era, and later advancements included the sifting of flour to remove the bran and the germ and the bleaching of the flour itself.