December 23, 2023 - 7:01am
Why sift out bran from fresh milled flour?
If bran is so healthy, why do people sift it out when baking bread?
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Why sift out bran from fresh milled flour?
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The Fresh Loaf
A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.
They’re trying to achieve a certain result with their bread….but I never do this. The whole reason I bought a mill was the get the full grain and all of its benefits.
I sift out the bran mainly because it can interfere with the gluten. I may make a scald or soaker out of the siftings and include that in the bread. This works very well and improves the flavor.
there are a lot of breads that wouldn't be made. Things like brioche, croissants, kouign amann, cinnamon rolls, and stollen come to mind.
Why sift bran out of flour? Because doing so allows the baker to achieve certain esthetic and functional objectives, which may include flavor, color, or texture.
You may have noticed that some posters here remove the bran and put it in a porridge or a soaker, which is then recombined with the dough. That permits the bran to absorb plenty of water which both softens the bran and keeps it from drawing moisture from the surrounding bread.
Paul
I keep the bran in but grind it extra fine after sifting. Then with the rye starter, clas, it can be directly mixed back into the flour and a lean loaf is ready in 4.5 hrs.
I like all the fiber it gives and I am sure the texture is affected too.
As noted above, loaves without bran have special qualities that are really enjoyable too.
Does bran interfere with the bread rising?
Especially if the bran is not fully hydrated it is said to act like little knives and cut the gluten, interfering with the ability of the gluten sponge to effectively hold gas. By soaking or scalding or sifting and then re-milling, bakers are making the bran less sharp, so it does less damage to the gluten, allowing the bread to rise better. You will also sometimes see whole wheat bread recipes call for adding gluten flour aka 'vital wheat gluten' to increase the strength of the gluten network. For myself I just like to make sure the dough is well hydrated and the gluten is well developed with sufficient kneading or folding, I don't like to add powdered gluten.
Do you reuse the water the water used to scald the bran into your bread recipe?
I wold imagine that the nutrients are scalded out of the bran, into the water.
When I have done it, the scald becomes a paste, which gets mixed right into the other dough ingredients. So yes, all the scald water ends up in the dough.
Like Tpassin said, all the water in the scald becomes part of the dough. I did some experimenting with this and I hope other more experienced bakers will chime in, but in my experience so far, scalding the bran allows (or maybe I should say requires) that you also increase the total dough hydration a bit to compensate, because the scalded bran is so good at holding it's water, there won't be as much water left to hydrate the rest of the flour. And gluten needs to be hydrated properly to come together and get nice and strong and stretchy.
I'll note though that I gave up doing bran scalds a while back, as they didn't make much difference in my bread and I didn't enjoy all the fiddly sifting and messing about with it. These days I just mix the dough and let it sit for half an hour to hydrate before I start kneading.
If I want an extra tender and soft bread I do a flour scald instead, which you can read about here: http://www.wholegrain100.com/making-yeast-bread-blog/converting-your-recipe-to-yudane
You will increase the liquid in the recipe to 75% of the weight of the flour and then set aside 20% of the recipe flour and an equal amount of the recipe water (by weight) to use in the scald.
You boil the scald water and pour it over the scald flour and stir, then let it cool before adding it all back into the dough when you mix everything together. Then let the dough sit for half an hour for the gluten and bran in the dry flour to fully hydrate before you start kneading.
Example: