Separating endosperm in Durum Wheat for Pasta flour
I'm a chef who is new to the world of home milling and fascinated by its potential. I'v worked in fine ding for ten years and not once have I seen a chef go through the trouble of milling fresh flour. This is shocking to me. To that point, I'm interested in milling the endosperm of Durum Wheat Semolina flour to make fresh pasta. Obviously DW Semolina flour can be found in specialty markets, often from high quality farms in Italy or milled domestically. I'd like to mill it fresh and see if there is a discernible difference. I have only a Kitchen Aid attachment for the milling process and #100 sieve. I have some beautiful Durum Wheat from Purcell Mountain Farms which I plan to process. With these tools is it possible to achieve the golden color semolina flour that I've bought in the market? I'm new to the process but Im eager to learn and have the means to purchase additional equipment if need be. Any words of advice would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
I own the KitchenAide grain mill attachment and have used it on softer grains than durum wheat. It is not suitable for the use you envision. The mill itself is incapable of producing flour as fine as is required for pasta. At best, it is either a coarse flour or fine meal consistency. Even if it did, the amount of strain on the motor would cause it to overheat and shut down, or the drive mechanism would fail, before you obtained a reasonable quantity of flour.
If you use the Search tool in the upper right-hand corner of the page, you will find many discussions about home milling, including the strengths and weaknesses of various mills. I especially recommend the various posts by bwraith (who hasn't posted here in some years) and proth5 about their home milling experiments, particularly as they attempted to separate the white (in your case, yellow) flour from the bran and other components. You will probably find their results fascinating, if not very encouraging.
Paul
I too own a KA-KGM and I've milled Purcell Farms Organic Durum for breads we like very much. But I've never tried it for pasta (though I've wanted to). I only have a 55# sieve and I re-mill the sieve's retained fractions over and over (sieving between each milling) to obtain a very fine mostly-endosperm pass-through fraction that contributes to a fetchingly yellow crumb.
I would certainly give your KA-KGM + durum + 100# a try for pasta. But like Paul said, the intial output of the KGM will be fairly coarse and a frustratingly small proportion will make it through the 100# tamis. But what does come through should be a very silky soft creamy yellow flour.
If you try it, please let us know how it goes!
Tom
Many thanks to both of you for the good advice. I've actually made some really nice whole wheat pasta with the Kitchen Aid attachment although it did heat up considerably from the friction. I guess my question is a more basic one. How do I mill and sift and is tempering a necessary step? Obviously a broad set of questions that probably demand a book length answer. If I grind on the most coarse setting with the KA will the berries not simply be pulverized into indistinct parts or will there actually be endosperm intact to sift out? I will definitely check out answers on the subject by bwraith and proth5 to steer me in the right direction.
Chris
i have found myself in the same experiment that you have been discussing here. Wondering now if I had milled too fine and therefore when sifting, didn't actually get any separation of endosperm & bran...and wondering if milling coarser will lend to better sifting out of the bran or just give an even tougher texture? What have you found? :)