Poor-Quality Flour Troubles Bakers

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30368, 18 February 1964, Page 14

Poor-Quality Flour Troubles Bakers

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, February 17. Poor-quality flour is troubling the Federation of Bakers and Pastrycooks.

In a report to be presented to the annual conference tomorrow, the federation’s council expresses its determination to continue its pressure on the authorities until flour reaches a quality which will allow a satisfactory loaf to be baked.

“Flour quality from this year’s harvest has shown a slight improvement over that of the last two or three years, but it is still far from the quality that bakers require to make a satisfactory loaf,” the report says. Opening the conference to. day, the Minister of Customs (Mr Shelton) said the wheat committee and the government were fully aware of the ' importance of good-quality flour being made available to the baking industry. If the basic raw material was poor, he said, no amount of skill and elaborate equipment could really hide the inferiority of the finished product. “It may look all right on the outside, but the inside.

. . . It is rather in the class of the builder who, because it will not be seen, uses worm-eaten timber in the foundations of a house.”

The result of the first commercial crop of the Hilgendorf wheat 61 strain was being studied with interest. This year it would be possible for the first time to assess the merits of a flour predominantly milled from Hilgendorf wheat. .