Bread-flour is creamy rather than pure white, a little gritty, and coheres slightly when a mass is pressed together. The test of a bread-flour is the quality of bread it will produce when bread is skillfully made. This is the method used in judging flour as flour is manufactured. Pastry-flour is whiter and smoother than bread-flour. All the so-called patent flours are made of the middlings, so contain a little less protein and mineral matter and more starch than the usual bread-flour. Three times as much of such flour is produced as of bread-flour. Whole or entire-wheat flour results from grinding the entire wheat-kernel. Graham flour is white flour in which some fine-ground bran has been mixed.

Flour is sometimes bleached to improve its appearance. This is done with the more inferior qualities to remove their yellowish color. This practice is undesirable, as all food should reveal its quality by its appearance and be sold for what it is. It should also be free from all substances not part of itself. The mixing of different kinds of grains, when practiced, should be disclosed instead of concealed. Thus only can one know what is purchased and how it will serve as food when eaten, or select food that will bring humanity the nourishment needed.

Bread needs to be made from reliable flour. Its general use in the diet is due to the fact it contains all food-constituents in significant quantity except fat. Butter used with it adds this. As all peoples now eat bread, so have all peoples in all ages. The breads eaten have differed and do differ. Over fifty kinds of bread are recorded as eaten in ancient times. To-day the kinds are numerous and the differences wide between white breads and the German black bread, the Scotch oat cake, the Swedish flat rye bread (baked only every six months) and the Jewish unleavened bread that resembles a delicate, hard water cracker.