A Bunch of Flours Trivia Quiz

Answer: wheat

Wheat originated in or around Asia Minor and was among of the first grains ever cultivated. Its ease of cultivation and high yield make it one of the most popular grains today, and are also believed to be a major reason that civilization itself flourished.

As a grain, wheat is classified into six types. Wheat has a higher protein content than other major grains. Its flour is used in a great variety of breads, biscuits, cereal, and pasta, and comes in many varieties (such as all-purpose, bleached, and self-rising).

Answer: maize

Maize is thought to have been domesticated in Mexico, and was spread around the world as explorers brought it out of the New World. Most maize is cultivated as corn, which bears little semblance to its original cultivar. Corn itself has several varieties, like sweet corn and flint corn.

Maize/corn is a high-yield flour and a staple of Mexican food, used to make tortillas and the foods derived from them. Coarser flour (cornmeal) is often eaten in the form of polenta, cornbread, or hushpuppies, to name a few.

Answer: acorn

The next time you go out for a walk, take a good look at those hard, unappetizing acorns. You probably would never consider eating them, but many people, from Native Americans to Europeans to Japanese ate them in older times. Acorns have to be prepared with effort, to leech out the bitter tannins that would otherwise make them inedible.

Acorns are not a common food any more, but acorn flour is used to make dotorimuk and dotori guksu, which can be found in Korean marts. These foods were particularly important during the Korean War, when food was scarce and people were starving.

Answer: buckwheat

Buckwheat is named after its triangular-shaped seeds. It thrives on poor soils, which in fact is why it is rarely grown today. If overfertilized, it grows poorly, and its cultivation declined following the increasing popularity of nitrogen-based fertilizers.

Buckwheat is primarily grown in China, Russia, and Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, buckwheat flour is used in a number of Eastern European dishes. These include pancakes, knishes, and blintzes. Buckwheat is sometimes called kasha by Eastern Europeans who have exported it around the world.

Answer: cassava

Cassava is an edible root grown throughout tropical regions and a staple food source among third world countries. There are bitter and sweet varieties, both of which contain dangerous amounts of cyanide. Without proper preparation, serious issues can occur.

When dried, cassava is called tapioca. It can be ground to make flour, which is used to make cassava bread, fermented as a paste, or fried. Many African and Asian dishes involve the use of cassava flour.

Answer: peanut

Like many staple foods, peanuts originated in South America. They were originally used as animal feed until the early twentieth century, when programs in the US encouraged human consumption. George Washington Carver was a well-known advocate of peanuts, inventing hundreds of uses for them.

Though commonly eaten whole or as a butter, peanuts can be made into peanut flour. Peanut flour is very flavorful and high in protein. It can be used as a thickener for soups or gravies, or blended with other flours as a flavor enhancer.

Answer: potato

Potatoes were domesticated as far as 10,000 years ago. The thousands of varieties of potatoes that exist are believed to have come from a single source in Peru. They grow well in many environments with little special effort, making them a popular food crop worldwide.

Among the many ways they are consumed, potatoes can be made into potato flour or potato starch flour. Such flour can be used in soups, gravies, bread, and biscuits. Potato flour is also very important in Jewish cooking, because of dietary restrictions during Passover.

Answer: rye

Rye is a cereal grass similar to wheat. It originated in Asia Minor, but is much less popular as a cultivated plant. Most rye is grown around Eastern Europe, and does not see wide scale exportation the way many grains do. It can grow in poor soil and even during parts of winter.

Rye can be milled to make rye flour, which is widely eaten around the areas it is grown. Common uses for rye flour include crispbread (knackebrod), pumpernickel, and sourdough.

Answer: rice

Domesticated as long as 13,000 years ago in China, rice is the single most widely-consumed staple grain in the world. Cultivating rice is a very labor-intensive act and normally done in areas with lots of water. White rice is the endosperm of a rice seed, whereas brown rice retains the seed's coat and germ.

As a food, rice can be milled to make flour. In turn, rice flour can be used to make bread, rice paper, noodles, and mochi. Rice flour can even be used to make beverages like rice milk and sake, and is sometimes used to cultivate mushrooms.

Answer: barley

Along with wheat and rye, barley is one of a trifecta of cereal grasses, similar in nature, and all cultivated in the same part of the world, all believed to have been contributing factors to the spread of civilizations. The name 'barley' is actually derived from a Latin word meaning 'flour'.

Dehulled barley can be ground into flour. In Europe, barley flour was often used to make bread, porridge, and gruel, all of which were basic foods in the Middle Ages. Barley has been a Tibetan staple since the first millennium; there, barley flour is roasted to make tsampa.