I have been trying to make sense of health articles mentioning flour.
The average American consumes about 152 pounds of sugar and 146 pounds of flour a year.
In India, we use the specific terms maida and atta. Wikipedia defines them as:
Maida is a finely milled refined and bleached wheat flour… A white
wheat flour without any bran… used extensively in
making fast food, bakery products such as pastries and bread
varieties of sweets and in making traditional breadsAtta is an Indian wheat flour used to make most South Asian
flatbreads, such as chapati, roti, naan and puri. Atta refers to the
pulverized whole wheat with brownish white color.
What are the counterpart terms in English? I am guessing "flour" is short for one or the other type, rather than generic.
Best Answer
If the original article says flour, you can assume it's talking about all kinds of flours.
As for the flour taxonomy, English typically uses adjectives to distinguish between them, such as all-purpose flour, baking flour, and bleached or unbleached flour. You can read more about these various flours at the food encyclopedia or at this 2009 blog entry. Flours can also be named after the grains they are made from (e.g., flaxseed flour or kamut flour).
Specific names for specific flours are relatively uncommon in English, although I can think of at least one notable exception: