WHOLEMEAL FLOUR MILLED AT DANIELS MILL

The flour now milled at Daniels Mill is 100% stone ground & wholemeal (100% of the grain is used) and we use locally sourced wheat.

Wheat has to be of a particular quality & hardness to produce good flour for baking.

Our flour is ideal for bread making and is available for sale at the Mill and is sold direct to the public.

The Milling Process

Before it can be milled, grain is first screened and cleaned to remove debris and wheat stalk (chaff) which may come through from the harvesting process.  This is done by tumbling the grain through wire meshes. The resultant cleaned wheat is known as ‘grist’ and this is stored on the garner floor of the mill until it is ready for milling.

The cleaned wheat (grist) is fed into large wooden hoppers, or tuns, which sit above the millstones.  A pair of millstones is needed to grind the wheat into flour.  The bottom, or bed stone, remains static whilst the top, or runner stone, turns by waterpower.  When the waterwheel is engaged, and the top millstone starts to turn, wheat is released in a trickle into the centre, or eye, of the top millstone.  The amount of grain that is released is governed by the action of the damsel.  Centuries ago grain would have been fed into the stone by hand – often this was the job of a young girl, or damsel.

Centrifugal action forces the grains of wheat slowly but steadily between the faces of the two stones which are marked in a special way, until the grain eventually emerges at the outer edge of the stones crushed into a fine flour.

The surface of a millstone is cut, or dressed, in a concentric pattern of grooves, or furroughs.  The miller uses a tool called a billet to etch increasingly fine channels along which the grain travels getting increasingly finer in texture.

On reaching the edge of the stone the flour trickles down into a collecting shute from where it falls down through the floor into a bag or hopper beneath.

Bagged flour is then attached to a sack hoist, again worked by waterpower off the main shaft, and lifted up to the top floor of the mill ready for dispatch to baker or retailer.

FLOUR MAKING

The most effective grain for bread making is wheat. It tastes good – nutty with no bitterness – and it performs consistently well. An ear of wheat has all the ingredients for a good loaf: starch for bulk to feed the yeast and to turn a golden brown during cooking; germ to give essential fats and oils which enhance breads nutritional value; bran to help our digestive systems; and gluten which allows bread to stretch and rise

What differentiates bread flour from flour more suited to making cakes and biscuits is the gluten content. Gluten is a protein present in all wheat in varying amounts. Wheat grown in hot, dry summers in a short season will have a higher gluten content. These wheat’s are known as hard or strong. The high gluten content will ensure an extensive and even rise and a lighter loaf.

Wholemeal flour is ground on a traditional millstone it is and made from the whole grain of the wheat, from which nothing is extracted and to which nothing is added.  This is the type of flour ground at Daniels Mill.

Bran is the outside layer of the grain of wheat – often this is sieved out to produce a lighter coloured finer flour

Granary flour – This is a combination of 80% – 90% whole-wheat flour and malted wheat or barley flour. Malted wheat or barley has been allowed to start to germinate, thus releasing some of the sugars locked up in the germ. The result is a bread that has a characteristic sweet nutty flavour, much favoured by many people

Protein & Gluten – the link:
The amount and type of protein in flour affects the final product. The wheat proteins responsible for developing bread’s characteristic structure are gliadin and glutenin. When water is added to the flour these hydrate to form gluten. This is a strong elastic substance which forms a network throughout the dough. The network traps carbon dioxide, produced by the added yeast and allows the dough to rise. The process of kneading dough helps develop the gluten network. Fat and sugar can inhibit gluten development, but salt and ascorbic acid help it.
In products such as cakes, biscuits and pastry, flour with a lower protein content is mixed with fat to produce a crumbly and light texture

Gluten-free flour:  Flour made from barley, rye and oats all have very low gluten content but it is hard to make a palatable risen bread so loaves tend to be heavy

Other flours with a low gluten content are used in a variety of ways:  Oatmeal from oats make the flat bannocks seen in the north & Scotland; cornmeal from maize is used to make the Italian Polenta; chickpea flour is used to make chapattis; soya & rice flours are used as additives or enrichers to wheat based flour.

DANIELS MILL IS SPONSORED BY

Bridgnorth Aluminium