[Sca-cooks] Grinding Flour:Bran-Starch

[Elise Fleming]

Greetings!  Thank you all for the links and information you've sent on 
grains, flours, milling and bolting.  My puppy nose is now questioning 
two things.

Bear wrote in 1998 (filed in the Florilegium):
"Stone ground wheat comes very close to the fineness of roller milling. 
  The chief difference is in the level of extraction.  Stone grinding 
reaches a maximum of about 80% extraction.  Roller milling goes above 
90% extraction."

And this percentage is what the historicalfood site apparently uses. 
But Holly Stockley just posted:
"I've bolted hand-ground flour and come up with a product every bit as 
fine as commercial AP flour.  I suspect somebody mis-interpreted the 
data:  stoneground flour manages about an 80% extraction rate.  Modern 
roller mills do rather better.  This isn't a measure of how much bran is 
in the flour, but rather how much of the starch of the grain ends up in 
the flour portion.  Adding bran back doesn't match an extraction rate, 
but I can see where it could get confusing."

So, Bear, has your research in the intervening 12+ years modified to 
agree with what Holly is saying?  I don't see that you are both saying 
the same thing.  Is one correct and one incorrect?  Are both correct?

I sort of thought that using unbleached white flour was closer to what 
was available to the king's cooks than adding in some wholemeal flour.

(I think I'll roll over now and take a nap next to this lovely bone!)

Alys K.
-- 
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
alyskatharine at gmail.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8311418@N08/sets/