Need advice - husk on wheat berries
Hi all,
Looking for some advice here re chaff/husk on wheat berries to be milled at home. Thanks in advance!
I've been buying whole wheat berries for about a year to mill fresh in a Mockmill 100. I've ordered from Breadtopia or purchased at my local coop, and the berries always come clean, without rocks, impurities, or hulls.
I recently ordered Red Fife berries from a local upstate NY farm. I've had their Red Fife flour in the past and it is excellent. However, when I went to mill the first of the berries today, I found a number of berries with the husk/chaff still on, along with what looks like small twigs. Not a ton, but again I've never had this issue in the past; I ended up sorting through the entire 900g I was going to use. Picture below to see the yield.
I don't sift the flour that I mill at home, I mention that b/c that seems like one way to ensure chaff doesn't make it into the final dough. And normally I use fresh milled flour in bread, but I specifically bought the Red Fife for cookies. In case the context is helpful.
Two questions for you all:
1. Is some small amount of unhulled wheat berries is to be expected? And if so, what is a reasonable amount? I don't want to be overly demanding, but truthfully I'd be hesitant to order from this producer again if this amount of chaff is their norm, as it took a very long time to sort. And I'm sure I didn't find it all.
2. If a small amount of chaff makes it into the flour, is there a noticeable difference in flavor and/or texture?
Thanks for your help!
Previously discussed (google is your friend)
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/67079/removing-all-chaff-milling
Your supplier would be a best first contact.
Agricultural products are graded. Usually you compare prices to see how much extra work you're willing to do to deal with a lower grade product.
Thank you, I’ve read this thread. It doesn’t address some of my questions; namely, the solution presented there suggested sifting the flour. As mentioned, I don’t sift any of the flour I mill at home as I like it to be truly whole wheat.
Additionally, the source I purchased from does not grade their wheat berries. When buying from breadtopia, Maine Grains, Farmer Ground Flour and other sources from the Northeast I haven’t seen grading on the product either.
I’ve reached out to the supplier; the reason I ’m asking the community here is to get an idea of what the norms / expectations are, and what allowances folks make for allowing some chaff into the final flour mix.
I've had some lots of wheat with that much husk and debris. Some lots have non-wheat seeds. Most lots from Honeyville are clean. Since you bought directly from the farmer, I would expect the same level of trash in the future.
Good to know. Thanks!
I descibed how I prep (sort/clean) wheat for home-milling here:
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/61578/grading-wheat-berries
In essence, I spread out 1/4 cup of berries at a time on a white surface, and visually inspect, and remove-by-hand anything I don't want to eat.
This makes it easy to spot the berries still in husks and any foreign matter. It's just a little time consuming.
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Unfortunately, the link to the usda PDF (with wheat grade specs) is no longer valid -- link rot. So you'll need to google or duck it: try: wheat grade specification table
(Canadian durum specs are not applicable to US red/white wheat.)
Basically, farmers who are small enough to sell at retail are not going to clean wheat as finely/completely as a commercial mill will.
As far as I know, it's not going to hurt you if you eat a few ground husks in a kilo of flour.
I suggest reading the links on blackpoint. Over the years, that's been the most common defect in my experience. Depends on whether it was a wet year.
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But the main thing for home stone mills, and for home impact mills (WonderMill & WhisperMill, etc) is that you want to get any stones out, which could damage the mill or degrade the milling stones.
I describe in that post how I do the clean/sort process.
If you find the new location ot the wheat grade tables, please come back here and share it in a comment.
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Note: Any "things" smaller than wheat berries will eventually sink/gravitate to the bottom of the container as it is jostled, moved around, shaken. "Things" larger than a wheat berry will "float" to the top. So by shaking the container of berries, you can sort-of "sort" that way and make cleaning-by-hand a little more efficient.
Good luck.
Try this search:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wheat+grade+tables
and then clicking on:
https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/wheat-standards
which led to this:
https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/WheatStandards.pdf
It's not clear to me what category "with husk" falls under. Assuming it is "damaged kernals", then the limit is 2% by weight. So of your 900 gram sample, if you had 18 grams or less of "damaged kernals", then you still have "Grade 1" wheat.
But the 2% includes other "damage" types too, such as blackpoint.
Shrunken and broken kernals fall under a different line item.
This table with explanations is not totally clear to me, but I hope it's a starting point for you.
For me, the take-away is 2%. If you "need" to throw out 2% or less (by weight) of the kernals, you still have grade 1. And up to 3% of total "things" depending on sorting criteria.
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There are links/results to other country's standards in that search too. If I recall correctly, Canada's grading standards are stricter than the US.
Thank you, this is so much helpful information!
I was unaware of black point; after you mentioned it, I did some research and it appears that a good portion of my berries in fact have black point.
Might be a separate reason to not source from this farm again.
Thanks for your help.
I also mill at home. Most of the wheat berries and other grain that I get is of good quality, with no husks etc. I did get a batch of hard white wheat from Azure Standard that was more along the lines of what you describe. And as previously mentioned, I suspect it was because it comes from a local farmer/smaller operation. I half wondered if it was bagged from wheat near the bottom of the silo or whatever other storage container it was in. It wasn't dusty or dirty at all though, just some husks and a few little stems.
My approach is similar to what Dave describes.... spread it out on a light-colored surface and pick through it. I often mill a mix of wheat types, so only have needed to sort maybe 150 gm of the less-than-pristine wheat at a time. I should probably just bite the bullet and sort through all of what I have left and be done with it.
I am mostly through that wheat and will not be sourcing from them again if I can avoid it. I'll have to see what prices do over the course of the next year though.
Makes sense. Thanks for your thoughts!
You might try winnowing the wheat to see how much of the chaff you can get out.
This is done by pouring the grain in a thin stream in front of a fan. The lighter chaff should blow out while the heavier grain will fall into your container. I would suggest pouring into something deep such as a five gallon bucket.
Once you are satisfied you cannot get any more chaff out with that method reexamine what you have left. Absolutely there should be no small rocks or anything else that might damage your mill.
A very few (of the total) berries with the husks still on would be tolerable (in my opinion), but only a few.
A second winnowing method would be to sift the unmilled wheat berries. This requires a screen of some sort with holes just large enough for most of the hulled wheat berries to fall through, but not so large as to allow the larger berries with the hulls still on to pass. I have various sizes of colanders, strainers, wire screens, and what not that I experiment with until I find one with holes large enough, but not too large to get the job done.
Once you have the unhulled kernels sifted out you can probably reclaim them by rubbing them between the palms of your hands until the hulls separate then pour them through the windstream of a fan to blow out the chaff.
I've never had a problem with wheat berries this way, but have experimented off and on with oats. Those are a lot more difficult to process. I've done this with feed corn as well. I once ordered a couple of hundred pounds of what was supposed to be food grade yellow dent corn only to discover it had bits of husk, cob, and cockleburrs as well. That took a lot of fanning and still had to hand pick out the last few bits. This was from a well known supplier back in the day. I've bought cleaner corn from my local feed store. They never got another order from me after that.
(@Dunross: Great to have another home-miller aboard.)
it looks to me like his kernals with husks are also _shrunken_ and perhaps _heat damaged_ (note "burnt" look). There are only a couple that look big enough to salvage by manually de-husking.
When the inside berries are extra small, the husk on them doesn't make the overall size big enough to be easily separated from the normal berries.
Secondarily, "shrunken" or under-sized kernals are a defect anyway, which count towards the overall 2% defects that are allowed in grade 1 wheat. Net: all but about two in the photo need to be thrown out anyway.
If the photo contains all the bad wheat in his 900 gram sample batch, it looks like his wheat is well within grade 1 specs.
The shrunken berries still in their husks should be lighter than a fully developed kernel so fanning should remove those for the most part.
Good point!
Your array of screens sounds enviable!
I’d read about the fan technique you describe, perhaps I’ll try that next time.
thank you!
It was mostly just "stuff" that accumulates over the years. When I realized that fanning alone wasn't going to do what I needed to do I decided to try screening so I started casting around looking for something that would serve the purpose. Quarter-inch hardware cloth, an old fryer basket, and a particularly coarse sieve got the job done. You may have similar stuff laying around as well.
Our Brooklyn apartment has precious little room for stuff, sadly. My mockmill, bannetons (that seem to be mating/multiplying) and growing warchest of flour & wheat berries are starting to push out the two humans a dog.
Here's a screen shot of the above pdf:
This is very helpful! I will do some calculating this weekend to determine the Grade, especially now that I am recognizing a decent number of black point in this batch.