New Triops and National Flour

Late Saturday evening, shining a light into the aquarium revealed a tiny motile organism, still less than 1mm long. Sunday morning found at least three of these small organisms in the tank. At present it is still impossible to establish whether these are truly Triops but my hopes have been raised.

Mrs Thomas has been busy baking oat biscuits today and as we perused the collection of wartime recipes, in "We'll eat again" compiled by Marguerite Patten (ISBN9780600325246), we came across mention of "National Flour". Intrigued, I was tempted into a serious online search to establish the exact nature of the flour.

Basically, National Flour was a less refined flour that still contained wheatgerm. It was promoted on health grounds by the then Ministry of Food in the UK, between the years of 1942 to 1956, when it was discontinued. 

During my search, I also found that the colonial government of Kenya had in turn promoted a National Flour, though this comprised a mixture of 70% wheat flour and 30% maize flour. Apparently this made baking bread much more difficult, until an enterprising baker found that adding some oil to the bread dough dramatically restored the quality of baked loaves. The story is recounted in Madatally Manji, “Memoirs of a biscuit baron”.

The gathered information has now been added under "National Flour" to the Wikipedia page on Wheat Flour.