June 8, 2016 - 9:36am
Milling
I have been using my Retsel Mil-Rite for a number of months to mill wheat and rye. Using a variety of strategies, including Retsel's instructions, I still get what seems to me to be a substantial amount of course chunks in the resulting flour.
As a measure of this, if I sift the flour using a #50 sieve, I get about 70% extraction flour (and if I mill the sifted out material again and re-sift, it goes to about 90% extraction).
Is 70% extraction rate about right for one pass?
Another question I've had is just what having a larger stone does for the quality of the milling (in addition to increasing the rate of output)? Any good references or insights on this?
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I recently ran some hard spring wheat through my Mil-Rite stones. Only 17% of the flour passed a #50 sieve. Hard winter wheat would likely grind more finely.
I can't give you any percentages but I can tell you when I grind spelt I sift it and there are a lot of large pieces left behind. When I grind hard winter wheat there is hardly anything left behind. I don't know what screen mesh count it is.
I've never reground the large pieces, I make cooked cereal with them or bran bread.
Thanks - I should clarify that I'm grinding Hard Red Spring Wheat (organic, from Central Milling)...
I found an answer to my question about the difference having a larger stone makes from Dave Miller as he talks milling at The Grain Gathering in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWdycp5N2xE
Basically he says the larger the stone the great the potential for very fine flour, and also has implications for the speeds at which the stone will work. His millstone is 40"and runs at about 100rpm.