Heat and Milling
Hello,
I have read through some of this forum regarding this topic.
There are just few things that bother me and then some that, well, I'm not too sure.
For example:
Everything I read about ANY milling company (Wondermill, Retsel, Hawos, Komo, Shnitzer Country Living etc etc etc)
They all claim and say you are better off milling your own flour because you do not destroy the nutrients and vitamins that get killed through excessive heat of 'commercial milling processes'.
Ok - So that means in a very generalised sense... buying flour is not good because the flour has been over-heated through commercial milling and therefor by buying your own grains and your own mill you can do it the healthy way, meaning, not over-heat the grain like commercial mills do.
This is the main pretext (not over-heating grains and losing nutrients) to buy these home made mills and making your own bread.
So why does this bother me so much?
After much discussion with mill manufacturers.. any electric mill will heat grain over 40 deg C. Thus the entire point to making your own flour becomes void.
So you buy your own grains to make your healthy bread with the nutrition there (which is lost through commercial milling) and yet the very thing you buy, which are what these companies offer, also kill the nutrients because they all heat it over 40 deg C.
That means to me in the simplest sense... its absolute lies to make your own bread for 'health' value because 'hey commercial milling kills nutrients' when you doing it at home does the exact same thing... overheats and thus kills the nutrition (the very reason you did not want to buy flour!)
So what is the deal with that?
2nd:
People have also stated that once the bread goes into an oven that is 150-180 deg C, all the 'nutrition' is gonna be killed anyway because its hotter than what the mill did. Thus the mill overheating does not matter.
If it does not matter, then you got problem one again, companies stating to make your own bread for health when the oven will kill it all anyway, thus once again, may as well buy the flour that they say not to buy for 'made up reasons'.
However...
I also read that if you get a moist grain (one that you soaked over night) and a dry grain, stick a match under both of them... they both go black. However, when you open them, the one that had moisture is still fine inside while the dry one is dead inside as well.
So it could be that heat generated through milling process is more detrimental than the oven because once it goes in the oven, there is water (moisture) to protect the grain.
In which case, if that is true, then yes, it is better to make your own flour to not 'over-heat' during the 'dry' process. BUT again... all the mills that are electric heat the grain to over 40 deg C, which means unless you mill by hand, you are fooling yourself into thinking it is any better than shop bought flour.
Thus the information used to sell home mills is actually false information.
So - is grain protected once wet or not? The experiment with a match seems to indicate there is a difference.
Are there any electric mills that do not heat beyond 40 deg or if that is the need, then I need to buy a hand mill and that is basically it?
You are right. Commercial milling does not overheat the grain. The main reason to home mill is the fresh flavor. A secondary reason is to make certain flour and meal that would be hard to buy.
every kind of grain , sprouted or un-sprouted and the temperature never gets over 106 F. i only grind enough grain for one or 2 loaves a time though. So heating isn't an issue even with commercial roller mills who keep the temperature low enough to not harm the grain nutritionally or destroy the enzymes in the flour. Heat during milling isn't an issue and one made up by people with some kind of agenda or trying to sell you something
What makes flour nutritionally less than it could be is that the millers sift out much of the stuff that supplies the nutrition, vitamins and minerals in grain when the bran and germ are removed to make white flour - it also removes much of the grains flavor too.
Millers selling whole grains strip out the bard and non white bits and then put some if it back to make what they call while grains flours. When i make a whole grain flour it looks, feel, tastes and smells totally different than theirs because some of the stuff is missing in theirs and theirs is old instead of fresh.. I call it stale or dead flour. They call it aged hoping people are easily fooled that aged is as good as fresh/ I can tell you it isn't - not even close..
I also sprout my own grains to make sprouted flours and you won't be buying any 12 grains whole sprouted flour any time soon and if you could find it.......it would cost a fortune,
So if you want to make really good whole grin breads you have to mill your own flour. It is that simple. But most people are fine making bread with flour they buy especially if they like white bread. Nothing wrong with that. I use store bough white flour.all the time for the white part of recipes.
Happy baking
Thanks for replies...
I spoke to the manufacturers of the mills (Stone Mills) like Hawos, Komo, Salzburger etc.
They tested the temperature of grain for me when it would reach 40 degrees Celsius.
Basically after 2 minutes of grinding (on bread fine setting) the temperature reached 40 degrees.
The amount of flour produced was 440g.
So now if more flour desired, would have to wait an hour for the stones to cool and then switch back on for another 2 min to get another 440g of flour before the 40 degrees.
After that, the flour can get to 50-60 degrees if left on in excess of 10-15min.
So it is a very small amount, just under half a kg - 2 min of grinding the machine can do before it reaches its 40 degrees.
In that case a big hand mill, would be better suited to keep all enzymes. In 20 min I could do 1 kg of flour, instead of waiting 1 hour for the stones to cool.
But again... I buy the hand mill to retain nutrients... if they are lost in baking... then all my effort + time to do it was wasted and completely useless.
This is what I am trying to avoid but this is also why I am trying to find out if baking heat is different to grinding heat.
I read some articles done by Doctors and studies on grains, it basically stated something along the lines of boiled potatoes as an example.
Once you boil your vegetables, yes the heat took the nutrients out of the vegetables. However if you drink the water, you would still get a good amount of those nutrients sucked out of the vegetables by the heat.
If I apply that to baked bread... the nutrients would still be in the water part of the bread and thus still in the bread, which would indicate that it is better to keep all nutrients in the bread (prior to baking) - thus a Hand Mill more desirable, because all electric stone grinders will heat it up past 40 deg after 2 min (roughly 400-500g of flour).
So the Summary as copied/pasted here is :
SummaryThe nutrient value of food can be changed by the way it is processed, cooked and stored. Food processing can destroy the water-soluble B-group and C vitamins. However, processing and cooking food can also make it safer to store and eat.
To me that says there is a difference. Why? Well it says nutrient value of food can be changed by A: the way it is processed (hand mill or electric mill), through cooking (baking in oven) and stored (how long you leave it in flour form before using it).
If oven destroyed everything, then the process prior would make no difference... so I wonder if that is saying there is a difference or not.
Really trying to find if anyone has researched this.
1: Grind the wheat with electric mill for 5 min. Then get the nutritional value of that.
2: Grind the wheat by hand mill for 20 min (to get the same kg of flour) and then measure the nutritional value of this.
Now place both in oven, take out, and measure value again.
Then we would know for sure, if there is a difference or not. The pre-baking will be different (Hand mill having more)... question is after baking would it have same or still more because it had more to begin with.
I would also be quite curious to learn more about this, having bought a Salzburger mill myself. I think that if you grind small quantities at a time (1-2 loafs for home) it should mostly be fine. Some people freeze or store their grains cold which can further alleviate.
I like to believe that if something affects the grain negatively, you should be able to feel it in the final result.