Overview about Different Types of Flour

There are different types of flour. Flour is produced by grinding various types of grain by grain milling process, and it comes in many different grades of coarseness and in different colors ranging from pure white to yellow and dark brown.

Types and Structure of Grain
Wheat is a kind grain that is most commonly used around the world.
Rye is very popular in some European countries and in parts of North America. It is featured by stronger flavor and darker color than wheat.
Oats, barley and buckwheat seeds can also be made into flour and they are often used in mixture of kinds of flour.
Corn/maize is widely planted in America, Asia, Europe and Africa. Its flour products can be used alone or within flour mixtures.

A cereal grain is generally made up of three basic parts:
1. The husk or bran, which makes up the outer coating of the grain. It has little nutrition value in terms of vitamins and minerals, but it is an important source of dietary fiber.
2. The endosperm, which makes up about 80% of the grain and contains starch and proteins.
3. The germ, which is the small section at the base of the grain. And it is where the plant would grow if the grain were planted. It is rich in nutrition of natural oil, iron, protein, vitamin B and vitamin E.

Different Types of Flour

---Wheat flour
1. All-purpose flour: a kind of white flour produced from a mixture of hard and soft wheat. Both bleached and unbleached varieties are available.
2. Bread flour: a kind of white or whole-wheat flour milled from hard wheat. It contains high gluten content and small amount of malted barley and vitamin C.
3. Chapati flour: a kind of finely milled wheat flour used in India and sold in white and whole-wheat varieties.
4. Cracked wheat: a kind of broken wheat berries which is not real flour available in coarse, medium and fine texture.
5. Graham flour: a kind of coarse whole-wheat flour.
6. Semolina meal: is produced from a hard wheat (durum wheat), consisting of coarsely milled endosperm.
7. Whole-wheat flour: is obtained by milling the whole wheat berry to produce a coarse, brown flour.

---Corn flour
Corn flour is usually produced by milling the whole corn kernel. And there are difference between corn flour and maize flour in some countries.

---Buckwheat flour
Buckwheat is seed, not grain. And buckwheat flour is often used in Eastern Europe and North America.

---Barley flour
Barley flour is a kind of non-wheat flour made from grinding whole barley. It is a popular alternative to wheat flour.

---Oat flour
Oat flour is usually finely ground. And also there are steel-cut oats that is fine or coarsely ground oat groats, and oat meal as well as rolled oats.

---Rye flour
Rye flour is slightly coarser than wheat flour. There are dark rye flour which contains the husk, germ and endosperm of the grain, and light rye flour which contains mostly endosperm with small amount of germ and husk.

Grain Milling Process
Grain can be ground with or without the husk, germ and endosperm, based on varying degree of coarseness.
Whole-grain flour is obtained by milling the husk, germ and endosperm together, and it is the coarse flour; for a little coarse flour, only a percentage of husk and germ are removed; for refined or white grain flour, all the husk and most of the germ are removed. Nowadays, there are many automatic grain flour mill and flour mill plant are developed and produced to finish various grain flour milling process to get flour with required standards. Doroller is always making great efforts to supply quality and qualified flour milling machines.