@nellie.herman Thanks for the parchment paper idea. That worked well for me.
@susanmcc99 I tried both the bag and the parchment and for me, sifting on to the parchment worked very well and no flour dust off the paper, plus the sifted flour slid easily into my bowl.
I sift into a very large bowl. I take it outside on to the patio, which keeps mess to a minimum.
But, you’re not really baking until the kitchen is total a mess. 
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I have a very wide lightweight aluminum bowl, and using either the 40 or 50 sifter, sift directly into that bowl and lose very little. I love making muffins with freshly sifted bran … no comparison in taste to the commercially prepared dusty dry bran of unknown wheat origin and sift date!
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I found this way is very neat and every bit of flour is saved.
Get a large food grade plastic bag. Put the sifter with flour into the bag. Use one hand and vigorously shake the sifter back and forth but with the ends of the bag closed around your wrist. All the flour falls into the bag! The bran stays in the sifter.
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I use an Oxo 5 quart plastic bowl. The sieve fits inside the bowl perfectly.
Hold the two parts together.
Shake the bowl, not the sieve.
Sift small amounts of flour, not the whole batch at one time.
Good luck.
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I am working myself into the weeds in an attempt to bake entirely with freshly milled whole grains but still achieve the loft and texture of partially or fully sifted flours (thanks for your help on this, Eric and everyone else). Adam Leonti mentions a 70 mesh sieve and also mentions a 100 micron screen. I see on this website a 60 mesh sieve. Is a 70 mesh better? What is the difference between a 70 mesh sieve and a 100 micron screen? When I search on the internet, I find lab tools (not for baking) that have something approximating these products, but I don’t know if they are 1) appropriate for bread baking and 2) necessary. Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks
I don’t know how fine the 70 mesh sieve or the 100 micron screen would be, but I have one of the 60 mesh sifters that Breadtopia sells (sold? – I don’t see it on the site anymore) and I can say that I personally would not want to use anything finer than it for sifting flour.
For starters, I no longer do any sifting at all because:
- I’m lazy and sifting takes a long time and makes a dusty mess that I have to clean up
- I’ve decided that for my own bread, for the most part, I really want 100% of the grain in the bread I am baking. And on those occasions where I don’t want 100% whole grain, I find that it’s ok with me to mix some un-sifted whole grain flour with some roller-milled white bread flour to get the effect I am looking for and maintain my lazy baker lifestyle.
All of that said, when I was regularly experimenting with producing home-milled, high-extraction (AKA sifted, bolted) flour, I found that 60-mesh screen to produce a really fine, very nice high-extraction flour, but it took a long time to get the flour through that mesh and really made a lot of dust in the process. I think that anything finer would take forever and make even a bigger mess. I also have a slightly coarser, 50-mesh screen and I found myself using that one more than the 60. For whatever that’s worth.
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Thank you so much, Paul. That is really helpful information. I, too, am working toward 100% whole grain with no extraction, but I also want to follow recipes as written and then work my way back from there. I sifted some freshly milled hard white winter wheat for the Pumpkin Challah I made over the weekend, just in my regular old baking sifter and was able to get most of it back onto the surface of the bread at the end. There are a lot of things one doesn’t know until the elements are actually in your hands - so I appreciate your guidance.
I just got a Mockmill 100 and the 40 and 50 mesh sifters. So my own question is this - How much of the milled flour should I expect to be left behind in the sifter? A quick trial this morning in the 40-mesh sifter gave me about 50% of the weight of the original berries in the bowl, leaving the other 50% in the sifter. That seems like a lot of bran/germ to be left behind, but I don’t really know - and it’s possible also that I am not grinding fine enough (since I’m new to home milling and still need to dial that in also).
Thanks!
Are you milling at a setting where you hear the stones knocking a bit?
I AM REAL LAZY!
I use a fairly large bread kneading board to sift on as I don’t want to scratch the granite countertops and USUALLY catches 99% of everything. Then I use a dough scraper to pull into a container or bowl. I tried the bowl routine and had flour all over everything.
BUT I only use this when the little lady wants bran for something OR if I am experimenting with a recipe otherwise it is whole grain for me… 
I am now!
I just ran a little experiment, with 30 g of Yecora Rojo. I milled it right at the point where the stones are knocking, and then sifted with the 40# sifter. The 40# barely got anything - about 2 grams (under 7%). Ran that that through the 50# sifter and knocked it down to around 20 grams (about a third)
Cool! I think I understand that changing the setting of the millstones took you from 50% of the flour going through the #50 sifter to 67% of the flour going through the #50 sifter? Much improved.
Actually I started out with 50% going through the #40! So pretty coarse.
Wow yeah, that’s coarse.
More on milling techniques – I think the strategy was put forth by @homebreadbaker who will hopefully correct me if I got it wrong. (I will admit to being a little less careful, but I think this how to optimally aggressively use the stones.)
- Turn on the mill and set the stones to backed off from the knocking sound.
- Pour in the grain.
- Adjust the stones to “just knocking” with berries passing through – to protect the stones.
- Reset the stones to no knocking as the last berries are passing through (or at least shut the machine off immediately as soon as the last berry is through).
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I’m not sure I ever “put anything forth” about it per sé, but I did describe how I use my Mockmill pretty much like you described Melissa. I don’t recommend this, but in fact I actually push the mill harder than what you described. I turn on the mill and adjust so the stones are just touching then quickly pour in the grain. Then I immediately adjust finer until the rate of flour coming out of the spout is kind of slow. I know that is impossible to understand, and I don’t know what to do about that, but I’ve developed an understanding from trial and error that has included multiple episodes of pushing the stones too hard so they got clogged up and the mill needed to be taken apart and cleaned. So now that I’ve made that mistake a few times, I kind of know how far I can push it without that happening, and that’s exactly how far I push it so I get the finest possible flour I can get with one pass of milling and no sifting.
There is a great video on this page of the Mockmill site that shows how to do what I am describing. Look for the one that’s called “How to mill extra fine flour”.
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Paul: With regards to milling: I understand that if someone wants to have first pass flour (medium with most of the bran removed) then it is necessary to sift to an 85% extraction rate. If the stones are set close enough (the way the manufacturer says to) so that the resultant milled flour after sifting is close to that extraction rate why push the mill further ? The stones are ceramic and the stones will wear down if too close and the ceramic dust will wind up in your bread flour. Don’t remember the exact composition but when I spoke to Germany about the stones I found they are made with some kind of epoxy to hold the ceramic particles together. Even with the Wondermix grinder the manufacturer specifies NOT to set the wheels to close (metal burrs) as they will wear down quickly and where does the metal go???
Eric from Breadtopia did a video on the different mills and the resultant flour from the Mockmill with stones set like the manufacturer says produced the finest flour. My question is why does it need to be even finer than that?
You make some phenomenal looking breads, do you attribute part of your success to this ultra ultra fine flour or is this just your preference?
I have made some ryes using whole coarse grain meal (my preference is the Wondermix burr grinder for those as makes less fine powdery flour) which of course is very coarse and the crumb came out soft and beautiful. Of course I am not trying to make Wonder Bread either.
Interesting subject and views!
That’s a great video. I’m going to try pushing the setting even farther next time. Hard berries only 
- I like to use whole grain flour for both taste and nutritional reasons
- I think that fine flour makes a more manageable, better performing dough (more elastic and more extensible)
- I’m too lazy to either sift or do multiple millings
Balancing all three of those, I want to get the finest flour I can from one pass through the mill.
As far as I understand it, the mill stones in the Mockmill are made of corundum, a mineral that is pretty hard. I think that the way I do what I do, the stones spend very little time in actual contact with each other because I only “squeeze” them together when there are berries in the mill which keeps the stones separated. Putting some pressure on the stones while the berries are being milled results in pretty fine flour. I always back the stones off right at the end, before the last berries are finished milling.
Again, I don’t recommend this. It’s probably bad practice and I’m probably going to hell for it. But in the mean time, I like the flour I get from my mill a lot.
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