Recently, I've been attempting to grind and sift my own flour. The grinding is straightforward with a Retsel Mil-Rite, an excellent home stone buhr mill or my new Meadows 8-inch stone mill. However, the mysteries of sifting the flour have been less straightforward. A subsequent blog entry will deal with my progress on grinding and sifting my own flour. The sifting project motivates the need for measuring the ash content of my flour.

Ash Content

I have been making bread for a few years. I was happy with the product from store bought whole wheat flour, but since I have been using fresh ground flour from hard red winter wheat I have been having troubles. My dough never seems to knead up into something that is easy to knead. There is always a certain level of stickyness that verges on the unmanageable. Okay I can scrape it up and shape it and it is not that bad, but the problem gets worse when I try using sourdough starter.

I have recently tried three types of bread: