February 27, 2014 - 8:11am
Sifting fresh milled flour
Hi,
I am trying to get back into baking more of our bread and grinding more of my own flour. Does anyone sift their fresh flour? I remember there was a lady on here a few yrs ago that sifted hers. I was wondering what do you sift with? I think she said something about having different size, as in size hole screens to sift to different fineness of flour. Just looking for some ideas!
Jani
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http://www.fantes.com/sifters-shakers.html. I have the 55 and the 30 but the 30 holes are too big. I could get by with just the 55. It makes really nice flour and bran for coatings.
What breadbythecreek said. I too have a Fantes 55# and catch output in it, shake (bowl and tamis together) and re-mill the retained fraction repeatedly until it represents the target fraction of the total (20-45%, depending on grain, patience, bread being made). The advantage for me is that sufficiently fine output can be protected from damage by repeated milling and the coarser final product can be separately soakered, which I always do.
So it's not 'sifting' in the sense of a typical sifter one uses (squeezes) to break up clumps in bulk flour for cakes and pastries. It's sieving, to separate size fractions. Very useful, even with storebought flours (I think I read here that Chad Robertson pitches doing so in Tartine 3. Haven't confirmed that myself.)
Tom
Thank you both very much. Yes I meant sieving not sifting. I will order the 55 one. I have a hand mill and I don't even mind the slightly larger bits you get. I was just thinking of trying some soft wheat for cakes and biscuits and such and thought the finer the flour may be better!
out 20% of the hard bits to my starter and levain and to use them in pan, dry fried, Toadies that toad,de,b originally concocted with wheat germ and bran. One of the great flavor enhancers for bread if there ever was one.
I don't know what the screen size is for my sieve but after milling on time and putting the output through it I get a perfect 78% extraction flour every time. That is as much sifting as I am doing since the flour just gets everywhere:-)
Happy Baking
Jani, some posters would sift out the larger particles - I would guess less 2% of the flour fell into this category, then would add it back to the dough when kneading with the thought that by keeping them all the larger pieces of flour together, they would get better rise. I have done it once or twice, and saw some improvement, but I can't swear it works.