[Sca-cooks] Grinding Flour:Bran-Starch
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
Sat Nov 27 06:30:00 PST 2010
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/
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