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Wheat
Preparation
In its
simplest food form, wheat is prepared by merely
removing the
coarse bran from the outside of the wheat grain and leaving the grain
whole. This is called hulled, or whole, wheat,
and requires
soaking or long, slow cooking in order that all its starch granules may
be reached and softened sufficiently to make it palatable. The other
preparations are made by crushing or grinding the grains from which
some
of the bran and germ has been removed. Besides flour, which, as has
been
implied, is not considered as a cereal in the sense used in this
section, these preparations include wheat grits, such foods as cream
of wheat and farina, and many ready-to-eat cereals.
In the
preparation of wheat grits, much of the bran is allowed to remain, but
neither cream of wheat nor farina contains cellulose in any appreciable
quantity. As the addition of bran, however, serves to give these foods
bulk, a much more ideal breakfast cereal will result if, before
cooking,
equal portions of the cereal and the bran are mixed.
In
preparing
ready-to-eat wheat cereals for the market, many manufacturers subject
the
grains to such elaborate methods of cooking, rolling, and toasting that
these foods require but very little additional attention before
serving.
The only wheat products that demand further attention at this time,
therefore, are those which must be cooked before they can be served
and eaten.
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Did You Know?
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In
botany, a caryopsis is a type of simple dry fruit — one that is
monocarpelate (formed from a single carpel) and indehiscent (not
opening at maturity) and resembles an achene, except that in a
caryopsis the pericarp is fused with the thin seed coat.
The caryopsis is popularly called a grain and is the fruit typical of
the family Poaceae (or Gramineae), such as wheat, rice, and corn.
The term grain is also used in a more general sense as synonymous with
cereal (as in "cereal grains", which include some non-Gramineae).
Considering that the fruit wall and the seed are intimately fused into
a single unit, and the caryopsis or grain is a dry fruit, little
concern is given to technically separating the terms "fruit" and "seed"
in these plant structures. In many grains, the "hulls" to be separated
before processing are actually flower bracts.
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