The Fresh Loaf

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How Fine Should Sieve Be for "white" Flour?

mwayne's picture
mwayne

How Fine Should Sieve Be for "white" Flour?

Folks, I have #30 mesh sieve and #50 mesh sieve.

I want my flour to come on almost white..but of course. not like bleached flour.

But my earlier attempts with stone milling got lots of bran in my flour.
Also discovered I was overheating the flour when grinding.

So now I'm careful not to heat the grain by grinding in 3 stages.
1. Grind it first course grain and filter at #30 mesh.
2. Then take what's left and mill it again medium and filter at #30 mesh.
3. Then take the remainder and mill it fine (but not too fine so it doesn't get hot) and filter at #30 mesh
I discard the bran that is left after these 3 stages.
4. Filter the flour with #50 mesh to get finer flour.

The result of this gives me more yellowish much better color crumb in my bread.

So clearly #50 mesh is helping. but with magnifying glass it's clear that
specs of bran are still getting into my flour.

NOTE: I'm not against bran and love it in other recipes. But I just want
control over how much bran.

So my question is what mesh do I need to get it to finer, whiter flour?

The sieves to filter more fine that I can find are more expensive to purchase.
Over $100. So I want your advice if #80 mesh or #100 mesh is needed.

Please advise. I want it really fine so I'm thinking #100 mesh but maybe
that is too fine and will yield little to no flour at all. If I was rich, I would
buy both and try them out. ha ha.

Thanks in advance!

suave's picture
suave

I have a 55 mesh sieve and what I get off it is pretty close to T65, judging by the results.  May be a tad darker.  I used to have access to T65, so I know what it looks like.  But things like that will depend on the grind, on how many brans particle capable of getting through a particular sieve you create.

charbono's picture
charbono

From a variety of sources, it looks like something like 99% of refined flour will pass a #70 sieve.  Suggest you temper the grain to separate more bran.