The anatomy of the wheat berry

We know that wheat flour comes from the processing of the wheat berries, so let’s look at the anatomy of the wheat berry. The wheat berry is made up of three components and you might already be familiar with some or all of them.

The wheat berry is actually the seed that gets planted by the farmer to grow the wheat. It consists of a protective hard outer shell called bran. I am sure you heard of wheat bran before. Inside of that hard shell is some white powder called endosperm. Endosperm is nature’s way of providing nutrients to the third component of the wheat berry and that component is the germ. You heard of wheat germ I am sure? Well the germ is actually the little seed that germinates and grows a new plant.

So when the farmer sends the wheat berries to the miller, they put the berries into a type of mill and grind the berries into very small pieces. The miller can put the results of that process into a bag and it is called whole wheat flour. Get it? Whole wheat flour is what you get when you grind up the whole wheat berry. If the miller filters out the bran and the germ (they can be sold separately as wheat germ and wheat bran) the results is a fine white powder that we call wheat flour.