Note that the spring wheat contains more protein and therefore more gluten. The flour from spring wheat is creamy in color, granular to the touch, has more gluten, and is known as a _strong_ flour. Flour from winter wheat is somewhat whiter in color and smoother to the touch, feeling more like cornstarch, and if a portion is squeezed in the hand, it retains the imprint of the fingers. It has less gluten, more starch, and is known as a _soft_ flour. This type of flour is sometimes called “pastry flour,” the smaller percentage of gluten making it more desirable for pastry or cake than the stronger flour. Flour manufacturers and bakers are constantly experimenting to find the best possible varieties and combinations of varieties for bread flour. Some difference of opinion exists, but a combination of winter and spring wheat in flour is considered the best for bread by some authorities. We must learn to like a creamy color in bread, for this means the presence of more gluten. To summarize: a good bread flour contains a large percentage of gluten, is creamy in color, and granular to the touch. =Manufacture of flour.=——Modern machinery has taken the place of the old-time stones in the grinding of flour, although the two main divisions of the process remain the same, these being the crushing of the grain and the sifting out of the coarse portion. Milling now includes many stages in the process not possible with the cruder machinery of former times, and the present effects a greater number of separations and permits the miller to make a greater variety of products. [Illustration: FIG. 53.——A dissected grain of wheat. _Courtesy of Washburn Crosby Co._] Figure 53 shows a dissected kernel of wheat, with its five layers of bran. Within these at _B_ is a shell of glutinous matter, yellowish and of flinty hardness, and within this, but not sharply divided from it, lie the starch granules in a network of woody fiber, the germ lying at _A_. The milling process must remove the bran coats and the germ, and crush and roll the remaining portions to the necessary fineness. The germ if allowed to remain affects the color and keeping properties. The breaking and rolling are accomplished by steel machinery, and the final sifting is done through silk bolting cloth. By the new machinery about 70 per cent of the wheat is saved for food, 30 per cent being bran, “shorts,” and other by-products used chiefly for cattle feeding. Figure 54 shows the vertical section of a mill, simplified in the drawing that all the steps of the process may be clear. The diagram does not, of course, show the actual arrangement of the mill.[14] [Illustration: FIG. 54.——Simplified diagram of a flour mill. _Courtesy of the Washburn Crosby Co._]