You can easily make your own white flour and wheat bran at home by sifting home milled wheat grains.
How To Make Bran And White Flour At Home
You’ll need:
- wheat grains
- hand or electric grain mill
- stainless steel strainers of different sizes
Directions:
Grind the wheat in a grain mill (don’t use the finest setting) and sift the flour through the strainers.
Usually large strainers have a wide mesh, while the mesh of small strainers is tighter woven. So it’s possible to sift different types of flour: from whole wheat flour to white flour. You can also use a piece of muslin or other open mesh fabric to sift the flour.
Grind and sift just the flour you need for your cake or bread because home milled flour is best used fresh.
The large strainer with a wide mesh produces less bran and flour between whole wheat flour and white flour.
The small strainer with a fine-grid mesh produces more bran and finer flour like all-purpose flour or pastry flour.
What to do with the bran residue: You can eat the wheat bran, use it to make Victorian bran shampoo for thick, soft and glossy hair or make George Washington’s 1750s small beer.
Sifting the flour reminded me of Gustave Courbet’s 1855 painting The Grain Sifters 😀 even if they don’t seem to separate flour from bran but remove stones and chaff from wheat grains.
I am having trouble finding a strainers with different widths. Any suggestion on brand?
Sorry, I don’t have any suggestions on brands: I used old no-name stainless steel strainers.
I bought mine online. Search for flour sieves.. Different sieve and mesh sizes available
Hi!
I am pleased to have stumbled upon this article. As heretical as it sounds to home millers, I am eager to make ultra-fine, white flour from scratch. That being said, I have a couple questions:
1) Why do you recommend NOT to mill the berries on the mill’s finest setting?
2) What mill and sift combination(s) would you recommend to produce ultra-fine, white flour?
Sincerely,
Cameron
Hi!
If you mill the berries on the finest settings you can’t sift out the bran. To make ultra-fine, white flour you can try sifting the flour through fabric – like cheesecloth or (UK) muslin – instead of strainers: this produces finer flour. Or you can make homemade rice flour: this flour is naturally finer. Hope this helps! 😀