The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1883-01-18
How Oat-Meal is Made.

The rapidly increasing use of and de-
mand for oatmeal is creating a CORE
spending inquiry for plump, heavy oats.
Hitherto American oats have been too
light and chafy for making meal. The
culture of this crop has been careless, and
little attention has been given to i'm
proving the quality and weight of the
grain, Scotch and Irish oats often
weigh fifty to. fifty-fve pounds to the
measured bushel. OF course we cannot
hope to compete IN our hot, dry climate
with that of those places which is cool,
moist and admirably suited to the growth
of oats. But as we sow we shall reap,
and it has been satisfactorily proved that
heavy seed sown will produce heavy
grain for some years, and with good
treatment-that is, with manuring liber-
ally and with careful culture of the soil
the crop will deteriorate only very
slowly. Our neighbors in Canada pro-
duce oats of forty-tiye pounds to the
bushel from seed of the same weight i'm
ported from New Brunswick. So that
it is question of seed and culture with
this crop, precisely as it is with all others.
If we desire to grow oats suited for
making meal we have market for the
grain, and in any case farmer should
desire to grow heavy grain, although he
may feed his product on his farm. AS q
hint toward this result we give the fol-
lowing particulars regarding the manu-
facture of oatmeal, taken from the
AMERICAN Miller:
1.-THE first operation in the manufact-
ure of the meal is the removing from
the oats all the cookie, small oats, and
foreign seeds of whatever kind, for if
any of these remain the quality of the
meal is much injured. Black oats, if
even or good quality, giyea bad appear
ance to the manufactured meal, as it re-
appears in the form of black particles,
which to the tidy housewife appears to
be something much more uncleanly.
After the oats have been properly
cleaned by sitting, they are next sub
jected to the operation of drying. This
is accomplished in dry kilns, with
special apparatus constructed for the
purpose. This operation requires some
care to prevent the oats from burning.
As soon as sufficiently dry they are re-
moved from the kiln while still very hot,
and stored in such a way as to have
them retain their heat; after thus remain
ing three or four days, and hardening,
they are ready for the Smelling operation.
This Smelling is accomplished by passing
the oats through nillstones of special
pattern. The product that comes from
the stones is greats, or the whole ker-
nels, dust, seeds, ETC., and these must
be.separated; by means of a combina-
ton of sleeves and fans the greats are
separated from the other material. and
are then ready for grinding. For extra
quality meal the greats may again be
shelled and sopassed through brush
ing machine. The grinding of them
must not be long delayed, as few weeks
exposure renders them unfit for milling.
In grinding the groat, the great aim is
to avoid pulverization, and to have the
granttles cut square and of uniform size.
Dat meal is generally denominated by
the cut-;as pin-head cut, rough cut,
medium and fine cut-though these
| terms have different districts. After the
grinding the meal is passed through
sleeves and the siftings graded according
to size. Our Koung People.
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