Farmland Atta, Maida and Milk Powder in Bangladesh

Farmland packs the dry staples a Bangladeshi kitchen runs out of first. Wheat flour is the deepest part of the range, in a wholemeal grind and a fine white one, with aromatic rice and dried whole milk beside it. Which bag you want comes down to what is being cooked this week.

The grid above shows what is listed today, with the exact weight and the current price on each bag. Everything here belongs to the same corner of the shop, Arogga’s Cooking & Baking section.

What the Mill Leaves In: Atta and Brown Atta

Every flour on this shelf begins as the same wheat berry. What separates one bag from another is how much of the grain the mill leaves behind. Atta keeps the bran and the germ, so it grinds darker, drinks more water and rolls into a softer ruti.

Brown atta sits closest to the whole grain. The bran stays in and stays visible, which is where the colour and the slightly coarser feel come from. It behaves like ordinary atta on the tawa, though the dough wants a little extra water and a few more minutes of rest.

The two atta bags on the range are:

• Farmland Atta (আটা) 2kg — the everyday ruti and paratha bag, in the larger weight
• Farmland Brown Atta 1kg — darker and coarser, with the bran left in

Both sit on Arogga’s Baking Ingredients shelf, alongside the flours from other mills, so the two can be put side by side before anything goes in the basket.

Maida, the Fine White Flour

Maida is the same wheat with the bran and germ sieved out. That leaves a white, powdery flour with more stretch in it, which is why it goes into luchi, singara, paratha layers, cake and the dough for pitha. It takes less water than atta and comes together faster.

Farmland lists maida in two weights, and the flour inside is identical:

• Farmland Maida (ময়দা) -1kg — the bag for occasional frying and baking
• Farmland Maida (ময়দা) -2kg — the repeat bag for a kitchen that fries often

A household that makes ruti daily and luchi on Fridays usually keeps a large atta bag and a small maida one. Reverse that if the frying pan sees more work than the tawa.

Chinigura Rice for Polao, Biryani and Kheer

Chinigura is a short, fine-grained aromatic rice grown mostly in the north of Bangladesh. English labels sometimes call it Bangladeshi aromatic rice or group it with kalijira, which is a near cousin rather than the same grain. The scent is the reason to buy it.

It is cooked for occasions rather than for the daily plate — polao, biryani, tehari, and the milk puddings that need a rice which holds its perfume. Farmland Chinigura Rice 1 kg is the bag listed here. Rinse it once, soak it briefly and use less water than coarse rice needs, because the grains are small and cook quickly.

Aromatic rice is shelved apart from everyday rice on Arogga, under Rice & Lentil, which is also where the pulses that go with it are filed.

Full Cream Milk Powder in the Kitchen

Dried whole milk is milk with the water taken out, which is the form that survives a hot kitchen without a fridge. Stir it into warm water and it returns to liquid milk; stir it in dry and it thickens whatever it lands in.

Farmland Full Cream Milk Powder 1kg is the tin a household keeps for tea and coffee, for semai and payesh at Eid, and for the baking that calls for milk when there is none in the house. It is general grocery powdered milk for a family kitchen.

Powdered milk is filed under Powder Milk, which is where the tins from other dairies sit too.

Which Bag Size to Buy

Farmland bags its staples in household weights rather than in sacks, so the choice is usually between a trial bag and a restock bag.

The one-kilo bags

Brown atta, maida, chinigura rice and the milk powder all come in a kilo. A kilo is the sensible weight for a flour that is new to the kitchen, for a rice cooked only on occasions, and for anything that will sit open through a damp month.

The two-kilo bags

Plain atta and maida both carry a larger bag. These earn their place where a flour is used weekly rather than occasionally, and where the kitchen has an airtight tin to decant into. Buy the big bag for the flour you already trust and the small one for the flour you are testing.

The Bangla Words Printed on the Packs

Some of these titles print the Bangla name beside the English one. The maida bags carry ময়দা in brackets and the plain atta bag carries আটা, while the brown atta and the rice are written in English alone.

Maida and ময়দা are one word in two alphabets, and the same is true of atta and আটা. Type either spelling into the search box at the top of the site and the same bag comes back. Nothing about the flour changes with the script.

In Latin letters the fine white flour gets written maida, moida and moyda, depending on who is typing. All three mean the sieved white flour rather than the wholemeal one, and all three land on the same pair of bags here.

Storing Flour, Rice and Powdered Milk

Dhaka humidity is harder on dry staples than heat is. Flour clumps, rice attracts insects and milk powder cakes, and all three happen faster in a paper or plastic bag than in a sealed tin.

Weevils and damp in flour

Decant atta into an airtight container the day the bag is opened, and keep it away from the stove, where steam reaches it. A few bay leaves or dried neem leaves in the tin are the usual household answer to weevils. Wholemeal flour turns faster than white, so finish brown atta before maida.

Rice in a steel tin

Aromatic rice loses its scent in an open bag, which is the whole reason it costs more than coarse rice. A steel or glass container with a tight lid holds the perfume far longer than the bag it arrives in.

An opened tin of milk powder

Powdered milk draws moisture out of the air and sets into lumps. Whatever goes into the tin has to be dry, the lid has to close properly, and the tin itself is better off anywhere except the shelf above a kettle. A household that opens a kilo and uses it slowly is better served by a kilo at a time.

Reading a Farmland Title Before You Order

The titles on this range do not write their weights the same way, so it is worth reading the end of the line rather than skimming it.

Where the weight sits in the title

One bag writes its weight with a space between the number and the unit, the maida bags put a stray hyphen in front of the size, and the atta bag runs the number straight into the letters. All three mean the same thing. The number is the part that matters.

The word before the weight

That word is what tells you the grind. Atta and Brown Atta are both wholemeal; Maida is the white flour. Because the two sit next to each other in the grid and share a brand name, the safest habit is to check the word and the weight together before confirming an order.

What Changes the Price

Farmland prices move on two things above all: the weight in the bag, and which grain is inside it. A kilo and a two-kilo bag of the same flour are separate listings with separate prices, and the larger one is rarely exactly double.

Across the grains the gap widens. Milled wheat tracks the wheat market, aromatic rice carries the premium that any scented variety does, and dried whole milk moves with dairy prices rather than with either. So three bags in one basket can move independently from one month to the next.

The same holds when checking an atta price in Bangladesh, a maida price, or what a kilo of chinigura rice costs today. Each weight is quoted on its own listing, and a figure quoted for a kilo says nothing reliable about the two-kilo bag.

Staples are the shortest-lived figures in any kitchen budget, which is why none of them are written into this page. The number on each listing is refreshed with the stock, so open the bag you want and read it there.

About Farmland

Farmland is a Bangladeshi packaged-grocery label built around the dry staples of a home kitchen rather than around a single product line. The name appears on milled wheat products, on aromatic rice and on dried whole milk, which places it among the local brands that sell a household its flour, its rice and its milk powder under one mark.

The wheat side of the brand covers a wholemeal atta, a darker brown atta and a white maida, each bagged for retail rather than for a bakery. Alongside them sit chinigura, the small aromatic rice grown in northern Bangladesh, and a full cream milk powder. Pack weights stay in the household range rather than the sacks a caterer buys.

Several of the brand’s packs are labelled in both scripts, printing the Bengali name of the flour in brackets beside the English one. That is a common convention among Bangladeshi food brands, whose buyers know a grain by its Bangla name long before they meet its English one.

Buying Farmland Online in Bangladesh

The grid above carries the Farmland bags that are listed today, each with its own weight, price and delivery note. Opening a listing is the quickest way to confirm the grind and the bag size together.

If the basket is a staples order rather than a single bag, these shelves hold the neighbouring options:

• Dairy & Desserts — where the milk powder sits, with the dessert ingredients beside it
• Flours and baking goods are grouped under Baking Ingredients, and the rices under Rice & Lentil

One last habit worth keeping: read the full product title before confirming. Atta and maida look alike in a grid of similar bags, and the word in the middle of the title is the only thing that separates them.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the difference between atta and maida?

Both are wheat flour. Atta is milled with the bran and germ left in, so it is darker and absorbs more water. Maida has those sieved out, leaving a fine white flour with more stretch for luchi, cake and singara.

2. Is brown atta the same as ordinary atta?

They are close, and brown atta keeps more of the bran, which is where the colour and the coarser feel come from. It rolls and cooks like atta on the tawa, though the dough usually wants a little more water and a longer rest.

3. What is chinigura rice called in English?

There is no exact English name, so packs and shops label it Bangladeshi aromatic rice or small-grain aromatic rice. Kalijira is a close relative and the two are often shelved together, but they are separate varieties with different grains.

4. How is milk powder turned back into milk?

Warm water and a whisk. Add the powder to the water rather than the other way round, stir until no lumps remain, and let it stand a few minutes. The ratio is printed on the tin and differs slightly between dairies.

5. Which bag size should a small household start with?

A kilo of anything being tried for the first time, and the larger bag only for the flour already in weekly use. Damp is the reason: an open bag that sits for a month fares worse than one finished in a fortnight.

6. ময়দা আর আটা কি একই জিনিস?

না, একই গম থেকে হলেও দুটো আলাদা। আটায় ভুসি আর শাঁস থাকে বলে রং গাঢ়, পানি বেশি লাগে, রুটি নরম হয়। ময়দা চেলে ভুসি সরানো সাদা আটা — লুচি, সিঙ্গারা আর কেকের জন্য।

7. চিনিগুঁড়া চাল কোন রান্নায় লাগে?

পোলাও, বিরিয়ানি, তেহারি আর পায়েসে। দানা ছোট বলে পানি কম লাগে আর তাড়াতাড়ি সেদ্ধ হয়। একবার ধুয়ে অল্প সময় ভিজিয়ে রাখলেই যথেষ্ট, বেশি ভিজালে ভাত ভেঙে যায়।