Not tempering and whole grain flour milling
Lots of great threads on milling, which have sucked me into considering getting into it, and then dissuaded me a bit, given all the procedural details one could (and I likely would) attend to...two of which have been tempering and sifting.
For high extraction (or any sifted) flour, tempering makes a lot of sense to me...but if using whole grain flour, I'm wondering if it is helpful (making for a bit more simple extension of my baking hobby).
On this front, I was interested to read this about Dave Miller: "Dave mills all his flours himself on Thursdays just before mixing time: from the way he describes it, I gather he pretty much spends the whole day milling and mixing, starting with the kamut he uses to make the wholegrain pasta he also sells at the farmers' market. He doesn’t add any water to the grain prior to milling and never sifts out anything. He doesn’t age his flour either." (taken from: http://www.farine-mc.com/2014/02/meet-baker-dave-miller.html).
if it is necessary to temper before milling, the answer is no. Tempering toughens the bran and enhances its separation during sifting. If there is to be no sifting, there is no reason to temper. Even if there is to be sifting, tempering is not mandatory
"If there is to be no sifting, there is no reason to temper."
The post was not so much getting at whether tempering is necessary, but this ^^^ - if there are ANY reasons to temper, if one is not going to sift (and getting a better feel for what people are doing on the milling front). Your post confirms my basic understanding.
I still am fascinated a bit by the discussions of the differences between high extraction flour vs mixed WW/white (here and on the Girl Meets Rye blog).
I bake daily using freshly ground whole grains. I do not sift and I do not temper nor do I age any of my flour. All gets milled immediately before it is mixed.
Conclusion: as Charbono stated above - tempering and sifting are not mandatory to making a good whole grain loaf of bread. *^)
Dave's breads are some of the tastiest I've had. Fresh Milled Wholegrain is the way to go.
Josh
I am no expert, having only recently acquired my mill, and having only ground wheat berries, and having only done so the day of use, without tempering.
But, I can say that right out of the gate I baked with 100% whole wheat for the leaven and 70% Whole Wheat for the dough (which came to a 73% whole wheat for the total dough), and came out with a decent loaf, which could have come out better had I paid more attention to time and temperature:
Bikeprof,
I can think of a few reasons to go the sift/high extraction route:
It removes 100% of the large particles.
100% of the flour can be fresh.
While bran will be reduced, the percentage of flavorful germ may increase.
There are other uses for the bran.
Nevertheless, for me, it’s not worth the extra effort. I just blend in some AP. That said, high extraction breads are among the most liked.
I mainly use my sieves for maize.
all of the flour i use except for AP flour used in some non 100% whole grain breads. The reason I sift, getting around a 15% extraction of the larger hard bits and bran is because that is what I want to feed to my SD levain. I usually mill on Tuesday, make the levain on Wed and refrigerate it for 25 hour before make the bread dough on Thursday and retarding that overnight for a Friday bake.
As Josh says, fresh home milled flour is far superior to anything you can buy in my book - not even close. I never temper any home milled grain- milling and sifting is bad enough :-) Some say you need t use the flour within a week after grinding or age it a month - i have no experience to back that up - just the opposite. My flour ,a month after grinding, is no different than when i milled it. Don't know what happens longer than that.
I visited Dave Miller's bakery and also bought flour from him. His mill grinds the bran very small. You need a fine mesh to sift out the biggest pieces. If you're going whole grain I guess it's best to have the finest grind. For my purposes, because I ferment the bran separately (I feed my starter fine bran, discarding the outer layer), I temper to the have the bran not pulverize in the flour, which is about 80% extraction. With the addition of the fermented fine bran it ends up being about 90% whole. The reason I discard the outer layer of bran is because I learned that it is not digestible for humans. It goes to my neighbors pigs.