February 16, 2022 - 4:39am
Black / brown specks in plain flour?
Hi
Complete amateur here so please excuse the newbie question, but is plain / all-purpose flour supposed to be pure white, or is it normal to contain some specks?
You can't immediately detect it with the naked eye, but under light and maybe the macro function on a phone, you can see there's finely milled black / brown specks. It's as if you added a teaspoon of finely ground black pepper into a bag of flour.
This is just supermarket branded flour.
Thanks for any advice.
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Can you post an image?
What country is your flour milled? What brand?
Hope this is ok. UK flour
It looks like bran. In parts it looks darker but under the light it has a brownish colour. Our "white" flour is more often closer to off-white. As far as a I know we don't remove all the bran completely and we never bleach the flour. So while i'm not 100% sure, from a photo, i'm thinking it's a bit of bran.
Also what sometimes happens is wild oats (I think that's the name) can grow with wheat. It's more difficult to remove and can end up in flour but it's perfectly safe to eat.
Which regular supermarket brand is this?
Yes, I'm thinking it could be bran or something.
This is from Tesco.
I'm guessing this isn't normal, as if I were to bake bread, it'd be speckled with tiny tiny dots?
I found this... https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/dundee/2541635/customer-told-creepy-crawlies-in-tescos-own-brand-self-raising-flour-are-harmless/
While I realise it's not instilling confidence in you I still think it looks different! It does look like bran or wild oats. However I wouldn't blame you if you didn't wish to use it and/or contact tesco. Although i'm not sure you'll be told anything different. Perhaps get a voucher or something.
My question is now... are they moving? If not then it's totally up to you if you wish to bake with it. If bran, or wild oats, you really won't notice it in the final product. But the ick factor might remain not knowing for certain.
Sorry, but this is the best advice I can give you.
If the dark specks move, the extra protein would hurt you. LOL.
Eat them before they get you :)
I'm sure it won't be harmful but I wouldn't blame anyone for not wishing to use it just in case. They do look more like bran though.
then watch them. :)
Thanks for the replies everyone and Abe for the article.
Definitely not the same as the specks I'm looking at are not visible on passing glance - certainly not moving. It's like have some SAXA ground black pepper sprinkled within the flour.
I've used and consumed some of it without realising - hopefully no harm and just bran or similar and not bits of the grinding stone / machinery during milling.
It's really fine; almost as fine as the flour itself.