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Vitamin Blade Mill and Bran Extraction

nhatphong.tran's picture
nhatphong.tran

Vitamin Blade Mill and Bran Extraction

Hello!

I'm using the Vitamin Dry-Container to mill my wheat berries (usually hard white and red berries) and sift afterwards through a #40 and #60 sieve. If I follow the 60 second at high-power instructions given by Vitamix I still get a good amount of very coarsely ground flour which will not pass through the #40 sieve and the yield would thus be terrible at around 50% of the initial amount. So I'm grinding the berries for another minute totaling 2 minutes.

I DO have the strong suspicion that milling the berries to a fine flour will cause the bran to get equally finer and pass through even the #60 sieve. Is that true? Because I thought sifting is how you would remove bran from the flour but if the bran is the same particle size like the flour then I don't really see how sifting should work to accomplish that. I noticed that the gluten is not as strong when I grind the flour for long. Is this why a burr mill is better?

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

I have a Vitamix blender which I use for making flour, too.   I have been doing it for at least 3 years.

You're right.  You can't really sift the bran out, because of how the Vitamix works.  If you blend for only a few seconds, and then sift, you'll take out a lot of endosperm (white part) along with the bran.

--

Here are some other hints:

  1. If you can, use some other device to "crack" the wheat berries first.  As you have likely noticed, whole berries scratch the plastic container and turn it cloudy.  I use a "Shule" 3-roller mill, that I crank by hand, and run my berries through it first.
  2. I refrigerate the cracked wheat before putting it in the Vitamix, because the Vitamix heats it up.  Hot flour, before baking, is not good for it.
  3. I  put only 8 ounces by weight, or 227 grams of cracked wheat at a time in the Vitamix, and run blender for only 30 seconds.  I start slow, and build up to max speed over a period of 10 seconds, then I do max high speed for 20 seconds.
  4. If I want finer  flour than what is made in 30 seconds, I put the 227 grams of flour in a bag and refrigerate it until it is cold again. I do not freeze it, because if it is too cold then humidity will condense on it and make it wet. Then I blend it for another 30 seconds. 

I usually only do the 30 seconds, and not the 2nd pass, but..., granted  I "crack" it first in the 3-roller Shule mill.  

There are still usually some bigger particles, like grains of sand.  But those do not matter to me because I soak/autolyse this "coarse" flour, and use a sourdough method of hours of fermentation, and at least an hour of "final proof", so all those big particles soak well, and blend into the flour, and they are not detectable in the baked bread.

Good luck, amigo.  I hope this helps.

nhatphong.tran's picture
nhatphong.tran

That’s a quite interesting workflow you got there for the Vitamix. But how do you even get a fluffy loaf if you have a lot of bigger particles? The extended autolyse you mentioned? I run into fermentation issues because the dough rises much faster with home milled flour. What kind of berries do you use?

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

"But how do you even get a fluffy loaf if you have a lot of bigger particles?"

It just works.  Sufficient  hydration (88%), 60 to 90 minute autolyse(no salt, no levain), the 3 to 5 hour bulk ferment, and the 1 to 4 hour proof make it all work. You don't really need fine flour if you are patient enough to fully hydrate the flour and let it go through the "wet sand" phase and evenutally it turns to "dough".   Don't do kneading or stretch-and-folds until the mix turns from "wet sand" into "dough."

It's tricky because you have to use what looks like excess water, but eventually the coarse flour soaks it up.

It also helps to autolyse the fresh-milled flour by itself, without any white refined flour (store bought), because the white refined flour steals and soaks up the water first.

"I run into fermentation issues because the dough rises much faster with home milled flour."

Yes. We have to use less starter/levain compared to when using store-bought whole wheat flour.  I use 7% prefermented flour (14% starter, assuming 100% hydration), when doing a same day bake. And I use only 3.5% prefermented flour when vulk ferment or final proof goes over-night.

"What kind of berries do you use?"

Hard White Spring Wheat, Hard Red Winter Wheat, and Kamut/Khorasan.

nhatphong.tran's picture
nhatphong.tran

So no salt during autolyse? I always thought that salt helps providing stronger gluten as it retains humiditity in the strands. Interesting though, I will try exactly what you described!

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

I add salt when I mix in starter/levain, or sometimes later, when doing stretch-and-folds after the mass turns from "wet sand" to "dough".

nhatphong.tran's picture
nhatphong.tran

Wait does that mean I need a Grainmaker or some burr based mill now?

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

I am using a regular "wet" Vitamix container.  Maybe your dry grain container does not scratch as much as this one.

Also 227 grams of cracked grain seems optimum for my container.  Your's may be more or less.

But, the "bottom line" is this:  if you want to get sifted "white" flour, then a Vitamix is not going to let you do that. At least I don't know how to do that.  You would need a stone mill.  But even then, sifted flour from a stone mill won't be anywhere near as white as store-bought white flour.

if you are limited to just the Vitamix, here is my suggestion:

1. Chill the berries in a refrigerator, to 3 to 7 C.

2. Blend just 225 to 235 grams of whole berries at a time, for 30 seconds, and put it back in the refrigerator.

3. After a few hours, run the now "chopped" berries, 225 to 235 grams at a time, in the blender for 30 seconds.

4. Don't sift.  If you want partial white-flour bread, then buy white flour at a store to add to your home-milled whole wheat.  That is the easiest and cheapest.  

Actually, just baking and eating 100% whole-grain home-milled flour bread is cheapest. :-)

--

What Vitamix doesn't tell you, at least not very obviously in the sales material, is that the non-professional models are not designed to run for more than a minute without letting them cool.

So, by running only 30 seconds at a time, and then taking into account the time spent moving things around, my "duty cycle" is only 33% to 50%, since it takes 1/2 to 1 minute doing stuff between runs of the blender.

--

I use only store-bought white flour to feed my starter.  Using whole wheat flour to regularly feed a starter makes it powerful and it needs feeding more often,

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

Your question about reducing the size of the bran to fine flour. I don’t think that can be done in any home mill. I have tried. I think the bran separates in thin layers. And those layers are not very brittle. I have never been able to grind bran completely fine.

Your weak flour concern. I have milled grain during an experiment passing it through the mill 5 times. The dough was completely slack and unmanageable. I attribute that to starch damage, but that may be incorrect.

Danny

nhatphong.tran's picture
nhatphong.tran

So grinding the berries to a fine flour would still leave the bran larger to make them sift-able?

I had a similar experience with milling the same flour to often and wasn’t sure if it was because of the high energy transfer of the Vitamix but it sounds like remilling is never a good idea. 

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

I think Dan is thinking of a stone type mill.