Unifine mill facts for kids
A Unifine mill is a special machine that grinds whole-grain wheat into very fine flour. It does this in just one step, without needing to prepare the grain first or sort the flour afterward.
Think of old-fashioned grist or stone mills. They also made whole wheat flour. But the flour from those mills was often a bit rough because it included all parts of the grain: the bran (outer layer), the germ (the part that sprouts), and the endosperm (the starchy middle).
In the late 1800s, a new machine called the roller mill was invented. People thought it was a good idea to remove the bran and germ. This made "white" flour, which looked nice. But we now know that white flour is not as healthy. It's missing many important things like vitamins, micronutrients, antioxidants, and fiber. The endosperm alone has less than half of the good stuff found in a whole wheat kernel. Also, when you remove the bran and germ, you lose about 17% of the grain, which means less food overall!
The Story of Unifine Mills
The idea for the Unifine mill started in England in the late 1930s. The goal was to create a simple machine that could grind all parts of a raw material into a very fine powder. It would do this by hitting the material with a fast-spinning part called a flywheel. The hope was that this super-fine whole wheat flour would bake like white flour but still have all the healthy parts of the whole grain.
After World War II, an Englishman named John Wright came to Pullman, Washington in the United States. He got engineers at Washington State College (now Washington State University) to help him. They built a successful test machine. Later, the first commercial Unifine mills were funded by a group called the Washington State Grange. Leonard Fulton, who was the Secretary of the Grange, even ran the very first Unifine flour mill.
The college couldn't get a patent for the mills. So, they registered the name Unifine. In 1962, Fulton's company, Fairfield Milling Company Inc., started selling flour under the Unifine brand. Later, in the 1970s, another Unifine mill opened called Flour Girls. People who baked at home loved this flour because it made light whole wheat bread, not the heavy kind. These companies did well for a while, but eventually stopped. Today, a new generation of Unifine mills makes flour for the Azure Standard brand, sold in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
Why Whole Wheat is Popular Now
For a long time, people preferred refined white flour. But now, more and more people want whole wheat products. Groups like the Whole Grains Council say that whole wheat flour production almost doubled between 2003 and 2007. Also, in the U.S., people buy almost as much whole wheat bread as white bread.
Whole grains are much more nutritious than refined products, and wheat is a great example. Whole wheat flour is healthier than white flour. Even though some micronutrients are added back to white flour (which is required by law in some places), it still doesn't have all the macronutrients, fiber, antioxidants, and most of the protein found in the bran and germ of whole wheat. Whole wheat is a good source of calcium, iron, fiber, and other minerals like selenium.
What Else Can Unifine Mills Grind?
Unifine mills are not good for grinding very hard things like gravel or making mineral powder for mining. For those jobs, roller mills are better.
However, in agriculture, where you want all the healthy parts of soft raw materials in the final product, the Unifine mill works very well. It grinds things into powder in one step, which saves money and is less harsh on the materials. Besides grains, Unifine mills have been used to process other farm products like legumes and even grapefruit rinds.
