Milling & Baking News - August 20, 2013 - 34

Book Review 

OUR DAILY BREAD

devoted to the genetics of grain and is
intended, Mr. Bjornstad says, not for
academics but for lay readers, an objective not fully achieved. That he is a
geneticist rather than a historian is evident in the writing from time to time,
but Mr. Bjornstad leans well on earlier
sources such as the 1944 book, “Six
Thousand Years of Bread,” by Heinrich Jacob. He is correct in lamenting
the fact that so few books of substance
have been written about bread in the
70 years since the publication of “Six
Thousand Years.”
Important perspectives on the
revolution in milling that took place
in the United States and Europe are
offered by Mr. Bjornstad. The revolution began in the 18th century in
Philadelphia, where a seven-story
steam driven mill was built by Oliver Evans. The mill featured an “ingenious mechanism that hoisted the
middlings,” but the mill faced a basic problem — an inability to separate flour from bran. The problem
was addressed by the invention of a
purifier that used air streams to blow
the bran off the wheat middlings.
The next phase of the revolution
took place at St. Anthony Falls in
Minneapolis, the only waterfalls
along the Mississippi river.
“After a fortuitous fire in 1878, the
miller Cadwallader Washburn took a
decisive step and built a seven-story
roller mill based upon technology imported from Europe,” Mr. Bjornstad
says. “Soon, the competitor on the
opposite side of the river, Pillsbury,
followed suit. Stones were replaced
by steel rollers with grated surfaces.”
He notes the same revolution occurred in Europe, replacing a tradition

34 / August 20, 2013 Milling & Baking News

dating back to the time of the Crusaders. For instance, a roller mill was
constructed in 1884 at the Bjolsen
waterfall in Oslo with the capacity to
produce 1,750 sacks of flour per day. A
nearby watermill in Oslo dated from
the year 1147 and had the capacity to
produce 150 sacks per day.
Span of challenges still prevail
In addition to telling the world history through the story of grains, Mr.
Bjornstad offers a look into a range of
current issues related to grain. These include problems such as background on
stem rust, The Green Revolution, water
availability, challenges with boosting
yields and genetic modification.
What’s most impressive here is
how Mr. Bjornstad proposes addressing an array of important issues affecting grains and food. He
describes writing a book with such a

Author Asmund
Bjornstad calls the
collapse of the
‘magniﬁcent Roman
inventions in milling’
a great riddle of grain
history.
broad perspective as “essentially an
impossible venture,” and at times
the challenge is apparent.
For instance, in a discussion of increased futures volatility, Mr. Bjornstad doesn’t shed much light on
what is causing the problem.
“In 2000, the Clinton administration abolished all regulation on

speculation in commodities,” he
says, greatly oversimplifying the
Commodity Futures Modernization
Act of 2000.
Mr. Bjornstad is on firmer ground
when he discusses the issues associated with the Ug99, a race of stem
rust discovered in Uganda in 1999.
He notes the spread of Ug99 has not
been as great to date as feared.
“Should Ug99 reach the Indian
subcontinent, nan and chapatti for
one billion people and 20% of the
world’s wheat crops are endangered,” he says. “It would make the
winds on world markets in 2008 and
2010 a mere breeze.”
A number of interesting dynamics
in world food production are featured
in the book, such as the growth of potatoes as a food source worldwide.
“Since 2005 more potatoes are
grown in the tropics than in temperate areas, and it has the potential to
increase even more,” he says.
The book offers only a glance into
issues relating to water use and fertilizer. He notes that food production
currently accounts for 85% of water
use worldwide. In discussing sustainability issues around fertilizer, he says
recycling phosphorous would require
the separation of feces and urine.
“This separation is already implemented in some municipalities in
Sweden,” he says. “It has been estimated that urine could support two
thirds of Sweden’s grain production.”
Ultimately, it is the history passages of “Our Daily Bread” that
will leave readers’ heads shaking in
amazement.
While he gives the church credit for
reviving mechanical milling, other
episodes associated with religion and
grains are far darker. “Unintended
additives” in grains were cited by Mr.
Bjornstad as contributing to persecution of “witches” and Jews.
He notes ergot, a fungus that can
infect grain during flowering, sometimes triggers vivid hallucinations
when ingested.
“A series of investigations have
pointed to a connection between
ergot, inexplicable epidemics and
witchcraft trials in Europe and in
Salem in the USA,” Mr. Bjornstad
says. In Norway in the 1600s, a
country with only 3,500 people, at
least 137 were accused of witchcraft
and 90 burned or hanged.
A different microbe with a historical role cited by Mr. Bjornstad is Serratia marcescens.
“It may produce blood-stain-like
bakingbusiness.com / world-grain.com

http://www.bakingbusiness.com http://www.world-grain.com

Milling & Baking News - August 20, 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Milling & Baking News - August 20, 2013