8/2/2019 Flour Lab Test Results
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Flour lab test results
The tests results are in! (It takes so little to make me
happy.)
This particular batch of wheat was tempered for 48 hours with
20% of water added by
weight of the grain.
It was then ground as follows
1 Coarse pass sifted through #20 sieve contents of sieve
returned to mill
2 Medium coarse pass sifted through a #20 sieve contents of
sieve returned to mill
3 Medium coarse pass sifted through a #20 sieve contents of
sieve removed from
process. This was about 20% of total weight
4 Medium fine pass sifted through a #30 sieve contents of sieve
returned to mill
5 Fine pass sifted through a #30 sieve contents of sieve
returned to mill
6 Very fine pass sifted through a #50 sieve contents of sieve
retuned to mill
7 Very fine pass sifted through a #50 sieve contents of sieve
returned to mill
8 Very fine pass results combined with the rest of the flour
This is a lot of passes and a lot of sifting and it take me
about an hour and a half to do
this for 2 pounds of wheat berries with my hand turned, steel
buhr Diamant mill (brief
tea breaks included.) However, the multiple passes are actually
easier to do than fewer
more aggressive passes and the sifting steps decrease the amount
of material that needs
to be ground in each pass. The resulting flour is fine and silky
and bakes up pretty
much the same every week. I am milling hard white winter
wheat.
The flour was stored for about a week before taking the
samples.
I had a very small number of tests run I still need to produce
some bread each week,
so I selected those which seemed to be under my control. Falling
number seems to
8/2/2019 Flour Lab Test Results
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simply be high in these types of flour, and although I am
adjusting ash when I extract
material from the process, I havent been focusing on ash content
(but that would have
been my next test if I had enough flour.)
So the results are:
Moisture 10.4%
Farinograph (14% MB)
Peak (min) 7.00
Tolerance (min) 9.00
Absorption 68.6%
M.T.I (BU) 25
Starch damage % 6.23
The moisture is low despite my addition of water in the
tempering process. This tells
me a couple of things. One, the Mile High City is dry. Two, I
need to get going on
getting that moisture meter.
But the other numbers are within what is considered to be
required for good bread
making flour. The starch damage is actually on the low side
probably reflecting my
many small passes approach but still will within range. M.T. I.
is also on the low
end of the range and is not really troubling given how gently I
mix my bread.
The bread has been bearing this out, but it is good to have the
numbers.
So even with my low tech setup where I hand grind, hand sift,
guesstimate moisture
content and adjust grind by look and feel a reasonable quantity
of good quality flour
can be produced on a regular basis. My hands on process not only
takes the place of a
trip to the gym, but gives me some quality time to think about
the stupendous journey
of the grain or wheat as it goes from field to table.
