During the nineteenth century it became fashionable to use white flour rather than wholemeal flour. The flour-dresser was designed to remove the bran (the brown fragments of grain husk in the wholemeal flour) using a fine mesh or canvas stretched over a revolving drum. The finer white flour passes through, leaving the bran inside.

In early times, grain was cleaned by throwing the grain into the air using the breeze to blow away the lighter chaff and straw. The winnower is a mechanical device, probably operated by a boy in a farmer's barn which does the same thing. We use it to clean up our grain before milling.

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