Boulting is the process of of sieving the flour through large drums covered
with cloth of a particular fineness - nowadays artificial fabrics. In this
way you separate the ground grain, sieving out all the bran particles of
different sizes, until you get white flour - the inside of the grain left.
Early mills would have sieved out only the coarse bran, leaving the fine
stuff in the flour to make what we would now call wholemeal. Finer sieving,
by hand mostly would have produced finer whiter flour. When I worked in a
water powered flour mill forty years ago we made white flour, by boulting
and gassing and then added the fine bran back in to make 'wholemeal'.
Michael Costen
Dept of Archeology and Anthropology,
University of Bristol
--On 10 January 2007 12:20 +0000 Peter King
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I understand that a bolter was common equipment in a corn mill, for
> separating the flour from the bran. Assuming Frank Sharman's explanation
> is correct, bolted bread is the corollary of wholemeal (with the bran
> left in). However, I am building on what others have said. My old
> Concise OED defines bolter (also spelt boulter) as a sieve or sifting
> machine.
>
> Peter King
> 49, Stourbridge Road,
> Hagley,
> Stourbridge
> West Midlands
> DY9 0QS
> 01562-720368
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: From: Local-History list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
> Behalf Of Frank Sharman
> Sent: 10 January 2007 10:36
> To: Peter Wickham King
> Subject: Re: boulted bread
>
>
> Boulted (or bolted) bread is bread made from sifted flour. Flower was
> sifted by shaking it through a course cloth which was called a bolt. I
> would guess it made a rather better sort of bread for use in the home - as
> opposed to some sort of rough old stuff used, for example, in
> institutions.
>
> I am fairly sure this is right though it depends mainly on my recollection
> of seeing a bolting room in an old house somewhere.
>
>
>
> Frank Sharman
> Wolverhampton
> 01902 763246
----------------------
MD Costen, Archaeology
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