Wheat is the most common source of the multitude of flours used in cooking. It contains gluten, a protein that forms an elastic network that helps contain the gases that make mixtures rise as they bake.

Wheat grain has been used for thousands of years to provide food for humans. Wheat has been found in pits where human settlements flourished over 8,000 years ago. In the stone age, man ground grains of wheat with rocks to make flour.

Even before the wheel was invented, a revolutionary technology had been discovered: the production of flour. The realization that indigestible seeds could be ground into nourishing dust steered the history and fate of man in a new direction. Without the invention of the grinding stone there would be no bread or buns, no pasta or pizza, no cakes or couscous. Probably there would be no civilization as we know it.