Finely milling bran for bread
I've noticed that some commercial whole-wheat flour doesn't contain large flakes of bran, but still claims to be 100% whole-wheat (and tastes like it too). I've tried to replicate this milling myself by sifting fresh-milled flour through 60-mesh sieve, and pulverizing the bran further with a mortar and pestle. It didn't do much to the bran.
I have two questions:
1) Will grinding the bran extra fine give me a more open structure in the resulting bread by reducing the bran's tendency to tear the gluten strands? This was my intuition, but after thinking about it I realized it could also have the opposite effect, because it increases the total number of bran particles.
2) What's a better way to grind it more finely? I'm using a Komo fidibus. I have a conical burr coffee grinder, but haven't tried that putting it through that yet.
I'm always trying to up the % whole wheat without compromising the structure, and was wondering if this could be a good approach.
I believe that fine bran is considered worse than coarse bran for cutting the gluten strands and giving low loft, dense loaves - as per your alternative theory.
I have also found that home mills produce small bran particles compared to full size stone mills, which doesn't help matters!
Two possibilities to improve matters:
Lance
What kind of wheat are you using? I've been told that hard winter wheat produces smaller bran particles because they shatter, while soft wheat produces larger bran particles because they shear off the berry. I agree that soaking the bran could well help.
Thanks for the ideas. I usually add high amounts of whole wheat to my preferments so the bran has time to soften. I haven't thought of mixing sifted bran with water though. I'll try that next time.
I use hard spring wheat most of the time, but I'd like to achieve this regardless of the type of wheat, if possible.
Why exactly doesn't milling break the bran down into a powder like the endosperm? Is the endosperm powdery already?
I suppose I could just cut open a wheat kernel to see. Doesn't seem to matter how finely I grind, the bran always has a large percentage left intact, I mean 20-30% of the weight if I sift close to pastry flour.
The only way I could tackle bran I wanted smaller seems to be with a Vitamix blender.
I sift my bran out and use a spice mill to turn the bran into dust. Definitely a different composition. When I mill grains with a hand mill, bran comes out in flakes while the rest comes out in powder.
If I sift my whole wheat fresh flour through a #50 sieve to make pastry flour, is that the same thing as store bought flour? If so, will the gluten structure behave similarly or is it weaker since it gets stronger over time?
Do companies do something commercially to kill the germ and oils that can go rancid?
You might find this friendly explanation of milling flour helpful.
https://opentextbc.ca/ingredients/chapter/milling-of-wheat/
I just started autolyse for my first 100% freshly milled loaf with gluten flour added... I did about 1 TBSP per cup, or maybe 4 TBSP per 5 cups, I honestly can't remember, it was 50g for what I had though. No sifting at all... I hope it works well. This could be the game changer I've needed.