All About Wheat Bran

3. Less Nutritious Flour Emerged in the 19th Century

For a thousand years or more, stone milling was the only process available to grind down grains. During the 19th century, Europeans used two grades of flour. “Low grinding” flour, which used the entire grain, was created with a single pass of the millstones. This unsifted flour produced a dark, hearty bread that retained all of the available nutrients. “High grinding” reground the grains multiple times, then sifted it to remove both the germ and the bran. The upper classes preferred this flour, despite it making a much less nutritious bread.

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