Wheat flour

Milgaru is flour ground from wheat (mil, Triticum aestivum), sifted to remove the bran. Wheat came to Korea from China, and carbonized grains from the Wolseong palace site in Gyeongju and from a Baekje granary show it was grown by the Three Kingdoms period. It arrived somewhat later than the native millets. Yet for more than a thousand years it stayed scarce. A twelfth-century Chinese envoy's account of Goryeo, the Gaoli tujing, recorded that wheat was so rare it had to be imported from northern China, and that flour was too expensive to eat except at feasts.

That scarcity shaped how flour was used. It went into special-occasion foods — wheat crepes (miljeonbyeong), fried honey cookies (yumilgwa), and noodles for weddings and birthdays — and into nuruk, the fermentation starter for traditional liquor (see nuruk). Korean noodles were as often made from buckwheat or mung bean starch as from wheat.

Everything changed after the Korean War. Large quantities of wheat flour arrived as American aid, and noodles and hand-torn sujebi became filling substitutes for rice in poor households. Milling, along with sugar refining and cotton spinning, became one of the 1950s "three white industries" built on cheap aid commodities; the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that surplus grain shipped under U.S. Public Law 480 from 1956 undercut Korea's own wheat farmers. As diets westernized, bread, cakes and snacks pushed flour consumption higher still. Korea grows only a few thousand tonnes of wheat a year and imports the vast majority, mostly from the United States, Australia and Canada. For the full story see noodles in Korean history and food in modern Korea.

Korean flour is sold by protein strength. Strong flour goes into bread and pizza and soft flour into cakes and snacks, while all-purpose (jungnyeokbun) is the workhorse for the dishes on this site: mandu wrappers, kalguksu, sujebi, the batter for jeon, and ramyeon.

• Mostly starch: White flour is largely carbohydrate with moderate protein and little fat, fiber or sodium; the Korean Food Composition Table lists selenium among its more notable micronutrients.
• Contains gluten: NIDDK lists wheat in all its forms among the grains people with celiac disease must avoid. In Korean food that includes noodles, mandu, jeon batters, ramyeon, many gochujang and soy sauces, and fried coatings.
• Major allergen: Wheat is one of the nine major food allergens the U.S. FDA requires on labels.
• Prepared mixes add salt: Seasoned pancake and frying mixes (buchimgaru, twigimgaru) contain added salt and seasonings, unlike plain flour.