General Mills – American Fortune 500 corporation

In 1856 Cadwallader C. Washburn opened a flour mill in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  He named the company as the Minneapolis Mill Company, which began to mill four in 1866.

In 1880, after winning the gold, silver and bronze medals at the first International Millers Exhibition, the company changed the brand name to Gold Medal.

When John Crosby joined as partner in Washburn’s business in 1877 the company changed its name to the Washburn Crosby Company.

In 1921, the company introduced Betty Crocker and it was to become one of the most successful brand names ever introduced by an American food company.

In 1928 the Washburn Crosby Company introduced a cereal, Washburn’s Gold Medal Whole Wheat Flakes. Its name was shorted to Wheaties.

In the same year, under President James Ford Bell, the Washburn Crosby Company merged with a number of leading regional mills to become General Mills, Inc.

After World War II, consumers demanded products that required less time to prepare. In response, General Mills introduced Betty Corker cake mixes in 1947 and presweetened cereals in 1954.

General Mills introduce many new cereals, including Trix (1954), Lucky Charms (1963), and Honey Nut Cheerios (1979).

In addition to cereal, General Mills has also introduced many snack foods and junk foods, such as Bugles (1965) and Milk ‘n Cereal Bars.

The company diversified into industries such as toys and fashion in the 1960s but by the 1990s was again delaying exclusively with consumer foods.

General Mills acquired one if its chief rivals, Pillsbury Co., in 2001. Its headquarters are in Minneapolis.
General Mills – American Fortune 500 corporation

Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix

Aunt Jemima pancake flour is the first nationally distributed ready-mix food and one of the earliest products to be marketed through personal appearances and advertisements featuring its namesakes.

In 1889, Charles Rutt and Chris Underwood founded the Pearl Milling Company.

They created the first ready-mixed pancake flour. Charles Rutt chose Aunt Jemima as advertising’s first living trademark.

The product was originally named ‘Self-Rising Pancake Flour’ and sold in bags. In the fall of 1889 Rutt was inspired to rename the mix after attending a minstrel show during which a popular song titled ‘Old Aunt Jemima’ was performed by men in blackface, one of whom was depicting a slave mammy of plantation South.

In 1890 Aunt Jemima Manufacturing Company replaced Pearl Milling Company. Chris Underwood’s brother Bert was responsible for registering the Aunt Jemima trademark.

The Pearl Company had been in financial trouble and their owners were forced, in 1893 to sell their new pancake formula to a larger corporation owned by R.G Davis of Chicago.

Davis promoted both product and image; in the same year the company hired 59 year-old Nancy Green, and African American woman who was a cook for a Chicago judge, to dress in gingham, apron and head bandana to demonstrate their new Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix.

The Davis Company prospered and by 1910, the name of Aunt Jemima was known in all 48 states and had attained such popularity that many people tried to infringe on the trademark rights.

In 1914, the image of Aunt Jemima was so popular that the company was renamed the Aunt Jemima Mill Company.

In 1926 Aunt Jemima Mills Company was sold to Quaker Oats Company for over four million dollars. The image of ‘Aunt Jemima’ remained on the packages.
Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix

History of windmill

The invention of the ancient world was used by the flour millers of the Middle Ages, but in the twelfth century a new construction reached the European continent: the windmill that probably originated in the Orient.

It is known that windmills began to appear in Europe in the 12th century AD, in flat areas where rivers ran too slow to turn waterwheels for mills.

For areas that did not have easy access to running water but still required flour for bread, the windmill was the solution. The revolving sails, which can be trimmed according to the direction of the wind, turn the mill shaft.

The invention of the windmill appeared to some scholars to have originated in the east, because of the prior evidence of vertical, rather than horizontal axle, windmills in China and Afghanistan as early as the 700s.

Windmills were used first to grind wheat and later to pump for drainage. In Afghanistan they were used to grind flour.

Although the windmill was probably not a European invention, medieval Europeans made significant improvements.

Around AD 1100, the Mediterranean windmill began to appear in Italy. However, Mediterranean windmills only worked when the wind blew from the correct direction and when it blew within the correct range of velocities.

The first practical windmill emerged sometime around 1250. This design called ‘post mill’. Post mills were first developed in the Low Countries and spread very quickly to England.

Fifteenth-century windmills were larger, more stable and more efficient than earlier versions.

Probably the first windmill in United States was one erected at the Flowerdew Hundred Plantation on the James River not far from Jamestown, Virginia in 1621.
History of windmill

The History of flour in Romans times

The advent of agriculture changed the lives of the people. The Nomads started to settle, built villages and kept cattle. But even in the advanced civilizations the grains were still ground by hand between simple grindstones.

In earlier times, of baked bread was wanted it would first be necessary to grind grains of wheat into flour at home. It was a laborious job and in Roman republic, the women had of the household had to grind out flour.

They did it very simply; by spreading wheat grains on a large flat or slightly concave stone and rubbing them over with a smaller stone which might either be round, long and narrow like a roller. Romans called it ‘thrusting mill’.

The Romans were no longer satisfied with this: in order to supply the growing urban population with flour they ground the corn on cone mills – massive, heavy structures turned by slaves or animals. By the first century Romans were producing flour with water mills.

Later they applied gearing so that a vertical water-wheel could drive a horizontal stone. A Roman mill of sixteen water-wheels capable of producing up to nine tones of flour per day is known.

The construction of machines for such mills was described by Vitruvius, architect and engineer in his Ten Books of Architecture around 25 BC.

The largest complex of the Roman Empire appears to have been at Barbegal, near Arles, and it was estimated that it could produce twenty-five tons of flour a day.

During the later Republic and throughout the Empire most middle and lower class Romans relied upon commercial bakeries for their bread. Some bakeries used their own mills to grind grain into flour.
The History of flour in Romans times

History of Pizza

The actual term “pizza” begins to circulate in Italy for the first time in 997 in the Codex Cajetanus of Gaeta Italy.

The true “pizza napoletana” as it is understood in Naples is a disc of dough on which tomato is spread. This use of the term pizza was born after a specific historical event: the discovery in 1492 of the New World by Christopher Columbus. It was precisely the Genoese navigator who brought the tomato plant to Europe.

In 1596, the tomato plant was exported to Naples by Spain where it was used as an ornamental plant. The first historical indication of the use of the tomato in the kitchen is found in the “Cuoco Galante (Naples - Ed. Raimondiane 1733) by Vincenzo Corrado Oritano” head chef of Prince Emanuel of Francavilla. The same Corrado in a successive tract on the foods most commonly used in Naples declares that the tomato was used to top both pizza and pasta, thus grouping together these two traditional products which helped to make Naples’ culinary fortune and establish its place in the history of world cuisine. From this information, one can reconstruct the appearance of “pizza napoletana” as a disc of dough topped with tomato.

The first pizzerias, without doubt, were born in Naples and until the middle of the 20th century the product was exclusively a commodity of Naples and its pizzerias. From 1700 various botteghe were active in the city, called «pizzerie», whose fame arrived so far as the King of Naples, Ferdinando di Borbone, who in order to try this typical dish of the Neapolitan tradition, violated court etiquette by entering into one of the most renowned pizzerias. From that moment, the «pizzeria» was transformed into a fashionable locale, a place designated exclusively to the production of the «pizza».

The most popular and famous pizzas in Naples were the «marinara» born in 1734 and the «margherita» from 1796-1810, which was offered to the Queen of Italy on a visit to Naples in 1889 precisely for the color of its condiments (tomato, mozzarella and basil) which brought to mind the flag of Italy. Over time, pizzerias were born throughout the cities of Italy and even abroad, but every one of these, if in a city diverse from Naples, always tied its very existence to the phrase «pizzeria Napoletana» or, alternatively, used a term which could evoke in some way its tie with Naples, where for almost 300 years this product has remained virtually unaltered.

In 1984, in the month of May, nearly all the old-line pizzaioli (pizzamakers) in Naples participated in the creation of a brief disciplinary manual signed by all and registered by an official act by the notary Antonio Carannante of Naples.
Food History

The History of Flour

The advent of agriculture changed the lives of the people. The Nomads started to settle, built villages and kept cattle. But even in the advanced civilizations the grains were still ground by hand between simple grindstones.

The Romans were no longer satisfied with this: in order to supply the growing urban population with flour they ground the corn on cone mills – massive, heavy structures turned by slaves or animals. And around 25 BC the architect and engineer Vitruvius described a water mill in which a paddle-wheel turned the millstones by way of a gearwheel.

This invention of the ancient world was used again by the millers of the Middle Ages, but in the twelfth century a new construction reached the European continent: the windmill, that probably originated in the Orient.

It is not known whether the Crusaders brought the invention home with them from the Arabian world. All we can say for certain is that windmills were already turning in far-off England around the year 1150.

Initially viewed with distrust, the new technology experienced its heyday in the Netherlands, where it contributed to growing prosperity towards the end of the Middle Ages. Until far into modern times the windmill was a characteristic feature of the European landscape.

That did not change until the start of the industrial age. In 1786 London’s first steam mill was erected on the bank of the Thames. Barges delivered the grain directly into the basement of the unimposing building. Inside the mill, two 50-horsepower steam engines together moved 20 pairs of millstones.

The Albion Mill was so productive that it provoked the resentment of its competitors. After five years it went up in flames, accompanied by the derisive howling of the London mob.

What initially met with little approval in England fell on fertile ground in America. There the inventor Oliver Evans constructed a steam engine that operated at higher pressure and was soon driving large automatic mills.

Scarcely anything in our modern mills is reminiscent of their predecessors from the early days of the Industrial Revolution. Industrial mills now produce hundreds of different types of flour for every conceivable application, and in incredible quantities.

Every year, 320 million tons of wheat flour for human consumption alone run off the milling rollers. Wheat milling, especially, has become a global industry that bears a great responsibility. For the plant that was cultivated by the pioneers of agriculture over 10,000 years ago is now the staple food of a third of the world’s population – a bulwark between us and hunger.
The History of Flour