Home flour milling--Is there a good "how to" book for beginners?

[kapalmer7151]

I want to start home milling my flour but I haven’t found any instructions covering techniques. Is there a good book for this? Like: do you sift all flour? what kind of wheat berries for artisan bread, pastries, pasta, etc? How to adapt recipes. How to mill the same flour as Breadtopia’s Bread Flour. Do you use flour right away or let it age? Thanks, Kathy

[dave_r (Dave)]

I’m not a miller, but from what I’ve read online, most folks seem to use the flour “green” or un-aged/oxidized.

From reading “Bread” by Jeffery Hamelman, using green flour can preseny some difficulty for commercial bakers. I don’t know if this applies to the “no knead” or very wet doughs that many use currently.

In addition to the help from the community here, there are also tutorials that may help answer some of your questions. Happy milling!

Dave

[Fermentada (Melissa)]

This covers some of the questions you have:

Home Milling with my Mockmill

I’m not a big sifter, but this is a good thread with techniques for that:

Question about using a 40 mesh sifter

I’m in the process of sifter trials I bought a 40 and a 50 2 weeks ago. I used the 40 into a bowl … kind of a mess. The 50 was too fine for my level of patience. I think you are onto something with the bag idea. I bought a roll of bread bags some time ago that I haven’t used like I thought and they are large enough for the sifter so would contain more of the dust … I think. Still, I am not enamored of the 40 cake pan sized process. Up until about 5 years ago, I had a crank s…

I did do an experiment on sifting, soaking, and adding bran back into bread dough; and you’ll see in the comments a lot of interesting additional info.

Bran Sifting and Soaking Experiment

Inspired by @wendyk320 in this forum post, I decided to do an experiment where I sifted some of the bran out of a whole grain flour, soaked the bran in boiling water, and add it back during mixing. I wanted to see how this approach compared with simply milling the flour into a bowl and mixing all the ingredients. I picked warthog wheat because I’ve noticed it tends to mill with visible pieces of bran and I thought it might better show an impact of different treatment. I also enjoy the flavor! T…

[kapalmer7151]

Thank you, Dave . I have Hamelman’s book; I will read about 'green" flour.
Kathy

[kapalmer7151]

Thanks Melissa. I read all the pages you mentioned. I learned a lot! I am so looking forward to my own experiments and wonderful tasting bread.
Kathy