Milling by-products
This is part of our series on upcycling.
Flour made from different grains is integral to many food cultures, used for making all kinds of breads, pasta, noodles, dumplings, cakes, biscuits, pastries, crackers and other starchy sweet and savoury staples and treats alike. When whole wheat is milled to produce white flour, about 25-30% ends up as by-products; primarily bran, but also germ and endosperm.¹
Between 90-100 million tonnes of wheat bran are produced globally each year.² That’s before even considering other cereals that are commonly milled like rice, maize, oats, rye and barley. Like brewer’s spent grain (BSG), today bran is often used for animal feed (about 90% of global production) and is also found as an ingredient on the shelves of health food stores or used as an additive in processed products (about 10% of global production).³
Yet all cereal brans are highly nutritious—while their high fibre content is well-known, they are also rich in vitamins, minerals and protein. Globally about 15.5 million tons of perfectly edible protein could be produced from wheat bran alone.⁴ And there’s plenty of flavour waiting to be unlocked in that seemingly bland and dusty powder.
Here we present some of our culinary research into ways we can better utilise milling by-products:
Contributions & acknowledgements
Eliot wrote the article, with contributions and editorial feedback from Josh.
Eliot photographed the bran in our food lab.
Endnotes
[1] René Renato Balandrån-Quitana, Jorge Nemesio Mercado-Ruiz and Ana María Mendoza-Wilson (2015), ‘Wheat Bran Proteins: A Review of Their Uses and Potential’, Food Reviews International.
[2] Oluwatoyin Onipe, Afam Jideani and Daniso Beswa (2015), ‘Composition and functionality of wheat bran and its application in some cereal food products’, International Journal of Food Science and Technology.
[3] Khwaja Hossain et al. (2013), ‘Interdependence of cultivar and environment on fibre composition in wheat bran’, Australian Journal of Crop Science.
[4] René Renato Balandrån-Quitana, Jorge Nemesio Mercado-Ruiz and Ana María Mendoza-Wilson (2015), ‘Wheat Bran Proteins: A Review of Their Uses and Potential’, Food Reviews International.