I finally looked up how much flour a single wheat plant makes

I was reading an old farming book from the library and it said one wheat plant only gives about half a teaspoon of flour. That means it takes over 300 plants just to make a single loaf of bread! I had no idea the scale was that huge. Has anyone else come across a baking fact that totally changed how you see an ingredient?

3 comments

3 Comments

fisher.adam1mo ago

It's wild how disconnected we are from the basic stuff. I read that it takes a gallon of water to grow a single almond, and now I side-eye my milk carton. Same with needing acres of land for a tiny bottle of vanilla extract. Makes you appreciate the sheer amount of work that goes into the most boring grocery items, lol.

nina_jenkins1mo agoMost Upvoted

Totally, and @fisher.adam is right about that disconnect. Learning it takes like a thousand cacao beans for a pound of chocolate blew my mind the same way.

the_joseph1mo ago

That thing about the almond water is just the start. It takes over five years for a vanilla orchid to even make beans, and then each flower has to be pollinated by hand. That's why real vanilla costs so much. It puts @nina_jenkins's chocolate fact into a whole new light, where the crazy work is hidden in plain sight on the shelf. We're basically surrounded by these quiet miracles of labor that we just grind up and eat without a thought.