Fineness of Flour

that how fine a a mill can grind flour has anything to do at all with making great bread.  But it is a personal thing. I would posit that finely milled flour,  is about the worst flour one can use to make great tasting bread - especially oi you soft out the good parts afterwards.   But that is just me and my reflection on my own milling experiences to date which is quite sort at a a couple of years.  It all depends on what kind of bread and taste you like I'm guessing,

Happy baking

It can grind a very fine flour but it does have a tendency to heat the flour up especially at the finer settings. I compensate by measuring out my grain in 8 cup batches (hopper capacity) and putting them in the freezer overnight and grinding right from the freezer. Otherwise, at the finer settings, it heats the flour to 130-140F. This can cause considerable starch damage and the flour is probably good only for chapatti and pancakes.

Walter, The Lee Household Flour Mill makes a very fine flour, the models I have used are pretty slow, though it does not heat the flour any where near as much as an impact mill, like the Whisper Mill.   The Lee has one of the best adjustment for fineness, compared to most stone mills, since in essence it it keeps milling until the flour is fine enough to pass through an adjustable opening.  For a stone mill, to make it fine, you need to have the stones set so that rotate in a perfectly parallel plane, and can be adjusted to just barely kiss.  The problem with some of the stone mills is that if there is any wobble in the stones, or either is not perfectly flat, you will get mostly fine flour, but a little will pass through the wobble area that is coarser than the rest.   You can usually get a good price on a used Lee,  new is pretty expensive.  

Walker,  actually,  I have given it some thought, and don't know how we can measure how fine the flour is, unless I had sieves of different sizes. My impression is that the Lee is the most uniform one I have used and gets the finest flour.  The others let some coarser bits through.  I have owned a Whispermill  AKA  Wondermill - and took it apart,  I don't have the Nutrimill, but understand it uses a similar design - fixed "teeth" and rotating teeth, and as the berries move through they get exploded by the teeth.  The coarsness adjustment on the Whispermill just puts the berries in the impact chamber earlier or later ( so more or less impacts ).  In contrast, the All Grain mills have a fixed stone and a rotating stone, you adjust the stones to get them closer together, the berries drop into the center of the stone, and as they move outward, the upper stone is tapered so it gets closer to the bottom stone as the berries move outward, and in theory, can make extremely fine grain- though on the one I have, the stones are not perfectly aligned, so there is a variation..  I will check the Lee on timing and let you know, though the speed depends on how fine you set it, and I have the lower end model, the one with a bigger motor is supposed to be quicker. 

Walker,  I tested my Lee Mill, which is the old model 6, and it took about 20 to 25 minutes to grind around 525 grams of hard red spring wheat, set one click above the finest setting.  It is hard to know precisely when it is done, although the hooper is clear, the lower neck is solid aluminum,  so just because the hopper is empty does not mean it is done, and the noise is no where near as loud as the WhisperMill, but the sound of the mill changes a little when it is completely done. .

I just milled 34 ounces (964 grams) hard red winter wheat. It took about 15 minutes, though the last 2 minutes the grain hopper was empty, with a few errant grains jumping around in the hopper (that's due to the amazing wind velocity that's generated in the milling chamber).

When I clean the mill I save the fine flour that is left in the milling chamber and also the flour that clings to the inside of the cloth flour bag. Starting with 2 lbs, 2oz of grain, my flour yeild was two pounds (907 gram). The remaining 2 oz / 57 gr was whole or cracked grain plus coarse bran.

The flour was only slightly warm to the touch when milling was finished. The flour itself has no visible bran flecks and is as fine to the feel as any commercially milled white bread or all-purpose flour..

I have the model S-600 of the Lee Household Flour Mill, which is adjustable from fine to coarse. I milled the wheat with the flour finess adjustment lever set to about 1/4" from "F" (the finest setting).

This TFL thread has a lot of excellent info on the Lee Mill from a number of dedicated owners (myself included) if you want further information - http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/13634/lee-household-flour-mill

I guess I have a question, regarding the importance of fine flour.

My wife makes whole wheat bread (and has been since 1977), Our grinder is produces a coarse flour, nothing close to silky. BUT, the bread is perfect.

When I say perfect, I am comparing it to either store bought bread, or bread she has made with commercially ground flour.

I attribute her success to using the Hobart N50 mixer. Prior to the N50, the KA she was trying to use just resulted in disaster. The KA had some success with white flour, but, zero success with ANY whole wheat,,,

I was just wondering if anyone had factored in kneading, when considering grinder selection??

Phil, what do you see the difference being when using a finer flour for your 100% whole grain bakes?

I thought that the finer the flour, the more refined it was, the more it ought to be avoided. On the other hand, the coarser the grind, the more dense the bread, all other things being equal -- which is why, I thought, coarser grinds may require a sponge or mash to soften any of the hard bits (or a longer autolyse, perhaps?).

I am surprised to see that a manual mill can make a finer grind than an electric. Everythingkitchens.com states, "But however fine the bread flour may be, be advised a manual mill will not produce flour as fine as an electric mill. The Country Living Mill is no exception to this rule."

But maybe they were just comparing to impact/micronizer electric mills.

I wonder if you put the flour through the komo for a second pass if it would be softer?  I hate the noise of the grinder and wouldn't do that unless I thought it would make a softer bread.

Late to this thread but I use an all-grain a33x which is an air cooled electric stone mill.  It mills absolutely SILKY fine whole flour from hard red or white wheat kernels or rye.  I would say its even finer than store-bought AP flour, more like pastry flour.  No sifting necessary.  It takes about 30 minutes to mill 1 kg of flour on the finest setting.  Coarser grinds go significantly faster.  It's amazing to be able to bake a whole wheat bread, with full nutritional integrity, but with the texture of fine flour.  It reminds me very much of the high extraction flour breads I always loved in Europe.  I generally also mill a small amount of malted barley into the flour while I'm at it to improve yeast activity.

I have also used this fine whole wheat flour for crepes, pancakes and waffles, which come out beautifully, though a little more tender than when using commercially milled AP flour.

Incidentally, I will occasionally buy a bag of commercial whole wheat flour and run that through the all-grain on its finest setting.  Works like a charm, and relatively quickly, though there is more clean up to do afterwards.  That, is the only major downside to the all-grain, in my opinion.  Being air cooled, it does create some fugitive flour dust during milling.  I usually get around this by operating the mill outside, but that's tough over the winter months.  I might be inclined to try it in the garage this year.  We'll see. 

I've been using an old MagicMill III for ages - it is the concentric rings of metal teeth that don't touch each other but the grain gets pulverized as it goes through.  It will produce very fine, silky flour on its finest setting. And the bran gets milled pretty fine too.

The main drawbacks are that it is very high pitched whine (like a woodworker's router) and you do get flour dust all over.  I generally grind outdoors on the porch or in the garage otherwise there is dust everywhere.   

But mine has ground a lot of wheat over the years (at least 1000 pounds)  and keeps on going fine.