Sifted and Talented

Why you need a 50 mesh flour sieve

[UPDATE: I am so sorry to say that I made a mistake when I posted this. My sifter (which is unlabeled) is a 50 mesh, not a 40. I’ve had it for years, and I somehow forgot the correct mesh size. If you already ordered a 40 on my recommendation, please forgive me, my brain is not functioning at full capacity these days, what with the heat/state of the world/my book project. Fortunately, everyone who already purchased a 40 mesh from Breadtopia can get a 50 mesh for just $6:

Hi there. Breadtopia here with an evil plan to make you all keep your 40 mesh sifters that Andrew tricked you into buying to boost his Breadtopia stock.

Anyone who bought a 40 mesh sifter from us on Andrew’s recommendation who wants a 50 mesh instead can get the 50 mesh for $6 (instead of $11) if you agree to let our customer service staff sleep peacefully knowing they won’t have to figure out how to manage all those 40 mesh returns. IOW, keep your 40 mesh and we’ll sell you a 50 mesh for $5 off.

In all honesty, sifting with a 40 before a 50 really does work better (and faster) than trying to put fine flour straight from your grain mill directly through a 50 mesh which can take a while.

If you want to take advantage of this offer, please get in touch with our customer service at breadtopia.com/contact and send us the order number from when you purchased your 40 mesh sifter and we’ll send you a one-time use coupon code for $5 off a 50 mesh sifter.

Thank you, Breadtopia!]

(Sending this one out a day early, since it is a holiday week and I am taking the rest of the week off to celebrate our country’s independence from democracy.)

One of my favorite tricks for making whole-grain breads that don’t eat like whole-grain breads is to sift out the bran and soak or scald it to soften it. The presence of bran interferes with proper gluten formation directly, but it has a secondary property that is nearly as consequential: its relative thirstiness and rate of absorption compared to the endosperm and germ. Bran can absorb more water than endosperm, but it takes much, much longer to do so. What this means is that it can remain unhydrated even after a long fermentation, leaving hard, large particles that diminish gluten strength and leave the bread with a gritty texture.

But if you separate out the bran first and either soak it for a long time or (my preference) cook it with water, it both softens and takes up all the water it can, which means the remainder of the flour is able to hydrate freely and develop gluten structure (either during an autolyse, or by kneading the dough before the bran is reintroduced). Better yet, once added back, the cooked bran acts like other scalded flours and porridges do, keeping the loaf moist longer than it would otherwise.

Scalding the bran—as opposed to merely soaking it—has other benefits: it neutralizes phytic acid, which improves mineral absorption in the gut, making the bread potentially more nutritious than a simple whole-wheat loaf. And if you toast it first, it minimizes bitterness and adds a nutty flavor to the bread. More open crumb, softer texture, better flavor, better nutrition—win, win, win, win.

This is one of the better 100%-whole wheat loaves I’ve made, and it is easily as good—in all ways—as any white- or sifted-flour loaf I make, and I could eat it every day.

I’m using this method all over my book, but I’ve recently realized that in order for it to work, you need to have a real flour sifter—50 mesh, to be exact—and cannot get by using a standard kitchen sieve. My sieves actually do a pretty good job of sifting out some of the bran, but they don’t remove nearly as much bran as a sifter, and—from the survey I did over on the testing group—other people’s sieves are far more coarse than mine, making them practically useless for this.

Here’s what the flour looks like after going through the sifter. The amount of bran you get depends upon how fine the flour has been milled; stone-ground flours—including those milled at home—work way better here than roller-milled ones.

Above are four whole-wheat flours—three supermarket brands, including Whole Foods house brand (which is actually milled by Central Milling), and one I milled myself in my Mockmill, with the percentage of bran remove indicated. As you can see, far more of the ultra-fine, roller-milled Whole Foods bran passed through the sifter. The other three flours yielded a similar enough extraction rate (83-89%) that any recipe will work more-or-less as described. (7.7% is not bad, mind you, and you can definitely make it work if you tweak the formula a little.)

Having a good sifter also means access to high-extraction flour, something that is challenging to come by without purchasing it from a regional miller. I buy loads of high-extraction from my local miller (Ground Up Grain), and it is excellent, but it is nice to know that I can make Hi-X flour in a pinch from whole-wheat. (And of course, I have a bunch of high-extraction flour breads in my book, along with instructions for swapping high-extraction for white flour in other recipes. So having a sifter makes those recipes accessible to nearly anybody too.)

All of which to say: If you are planning to purchase my book (or are planning to test any of the whole-wheat recipes as a tester for it), and want to make my whole-grain breads, I am going to ask you to buy a 50 mesh flour sifter; a sieve will not suffice. I really do try to keep the number of essential bread-baking tools to a minimum—suggesting alternatives wherever possible—but I think anyone interested in whole-grain baking will absolutely want a sifter.

Be sure to get a 50 mesh one, which is on the course side; finer mesh sizes—higher numbers—will remove too much of the bran. “Mesh” numbers refer to the number of openings per inch in one direction in a screen (meaning a square inch of 50 mesh screen has 50x50 openings within it). The openings in a 50 mesh screen are 0.297mm wide. (You can find a chart for mesh size conversions here.)

The good news is that sifters are not expensive. The one I use—from Breadtopia—is a measly twelve bucks, and others are similarly priced.

So I’m curious: how many of you already have a 50 mesh sifter on hand? Or are now going to buy one now that I’ve told you to?

If you like whole-grain breads, or think you don’t, but would like to, I can promise it will be the best twelve bucks (plus shipping) you’ll ever spend.

—Andrew