I really enjoyed this article. I remember reading about the WSU Bread Lab etc a few years ago and it was great to get an update. Here are two older articles about bread that I really liked (both feature the Bread Lab):
Here's a quote that explains what the deal is with the whole wheat bread you can buy in America:
A grain of wheat has three main components: a fibrous and nutrient-rich outer coating called the bran; the flavorful and aromatic germ, a living embryo that eventually develops into the adult plant; and a pouch of starch known as the endosperm, which makes up the bulk of the grain. Before roller mills, all three parts were mashed together when processed. As a result, flour was not the inert white powder most of us are familiar with today; it was pungent, golden and speckled, because of fragrant oils released from the living germ and bits of hardy bran. If freshly ground flour was not used within a few weeks, however, the oils turned it rancid.
Roller mills solved this problem. Their immense spinning cylinders denuded the endosperm and discarded the germ and bran, producing virtually unspoilable alabaster flour composed entirely of endosperm. It was a boon for the growing flour industry: Mills could now source wheat from all over, blend it to achieve consistency and transport it across the nation without worrying about shelf life. That newfound durability came at a huge cost, however, sacrificing much of the grain’s flavor and nutrition. In the 1940s, to compensate for these nutritional deficiencies, flour producers started fortifying white flour with iron and B vitamins, a ubiquitous practice today. The rise of roller milling and bread factories also put pressure on plant breeders to make wheat even more amenable to the new dominant technologies; whiteness, hardness and uniformity took precedence over flavor, nutrition and novelty.
Today, whole-wheat flour accounts for only 6 percent of all flour produced in the United States. And most whole-wheat products sold in supermarkets are made from roller-milled flour with the germ and bran added back in.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/grain
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/magazine/bread-is-broken....
Here's a quote that explains what the deal is with the whole wheat bread you can buy in America:
A grain of wheat has three main components: a fibrous and nutrient-rich outer coating called the bran; the flavorful and aromatic germ, a living embryo that eventually develops into the adult plant; and a pouch of starch known as the endosperm, which makes up the bulk of the grain. Before roller mills, all three parts were mashed together when processed. As a result, flour was not the inert white powder most of us are familiar with today; it was pungent, golden and speckled, because of fragrant oils released from the living germ and bits of hardy bran. If freshly ground flour was not used within a few weeks, however, the oils turned it rancid.
Roller mills solved this problem. Their immense spinning cylinders denuded the endosperm and discarded the germ and bran, producing virtually unspoilable alabaster flour composed entirely of endosperm. It was a boon for the growing flour industry: Mills could now source wheat from all over, blend it to achieve consistency and transport it across the nation without worrying about shelf life. That newfound durability came at a huge cost, however, sacrificing much of the grain’s flavor and nutrition. In the 1940s, to compensate for these nutritional deficiencies, flour producers started fortifying white flour with iron and B vitamins, a ubiquitous practice today. The rise of roller milling and bread factories also put pressure on plant breeders to make wheat even more amenable to the new dominant technologies; whiteness, hardness and uniformity took precedence over flavor, nutrition and novelty.
Today, whole-wheat flour accounts for only 6 percent of all flour produced in the United States. And most whole-wheat products sold in supermarkets are made from roller-milled flour with the germ and bran added back in.