Whole Grain Flour – Sifting True From False
Are the old ways of milling always healthier than today’s modern ways? Since our organization is named “Oldways” you might expect our answer to be a quick “yes.” But the facts paint a more interesting picture.
Which method produces better flour: grinding with traditional millstones or with modern steel roller mills? Before we share our thoughts, take this simple true-or-false quiz to see what you already know about milling grains into whole grain flour – flour that contains all of the grain kernel’s original bran, germ and endosperm. We’ll reveal the answers throughout the blog.
T or F | 1. Stoneground flour is always healthier and more natural than flour made in big industrial steel-roller mills. |
T or F | 2. If the label says “stoneground wheat” the flour is always whole grain. |
T or F | 3. Before steel-roller mills became widespread in the late 1800s, all flour was whole grain. |
T or F | 4. Modern steel-roller mills don’t really produce whole grain; they leave out part of the germ or bran or both – and FDA says that’s okay. |
Is stoneground flour healthier? Some popular websites and books say that traditional stone mill wheels grind grain more gently, at a lower temperature than the big industrial mills called roller mills. Temperature’s important, because high temperatures can destroy key nutrients in grains.
Research shows, though, that stone mills generally operate at much higher temperatures than roller mills – as high as 90°C/194°F for stones vs. 35°C/95°F for roller mills. Plus, roller mills work so efficiently that the flour they produce is held at top temperatures only briefly, while stone mills take longer to reduce the grain to flour particles. That could explain why some data show stone-milled flour having greater loss of amino acids and healthy fats.
Stoneground grains often have a larger particle size than those ground in roller mills. This means that breads made from them may have a slightly lower glycemic index (healthier for your blood sugar). At the same time, though, studies show that vitamins and minerals may be less bio-available in larger particles. We give #1 a False, based on the data. Whole grain flour has the potential to be healthy either way, as long as the miller has taken care with the process.
A stone mill (photo courtesy of Osttiroler Getreidemühlen)
Does stoneground always mean whole grain? Roller mills usually divide flour into separate “streams” as they grind it, then recombine everything to produce whole grain flour. Stone mills keep everything all together during grinding, in what’s known as single-stream milling. But that doesn’t mean millers couldn’t sift out some or all of the bran after the flour is milled, so while #2 is usually true, stoneground is no guarantee of whole grain, so read labels carefully. And that leads us to some interesting history….
Was all flour whole grain before roller mills? Before I started working with the Oldways Whole Grains Council, I had a more “black and white” view of grain history. I figured pretty much everyone ate healthy whole grain bread before roller mills became widespread, and then zap, suddenly white bread was everywhere, right? Wrong.
Historic sources show that two thousand years ago Roman millers sifted their flour to create a whiter bread for their better-off clients, and the practice persisted through the centuries. (After all, no one knew about the health benefits of bran and germ, but they knew white flour kept fresh longer and was easier to bake with.) That quaint gristmill by the stream in colonial America, in fact, often included sifters and shakers to remove some of the bran (along with rocks and dirt). That said, older sifting processes weren’t very thorough, so the flour likely kept more of its good stuff than today’s white flour. Conclusion: #3 turns out to be False as well.
An industrial steel roller mill (Fotolia photo)
Is industrial whole wheat flour really whole? Another widespread rumor has it that industrial roller mills leave out part of the original wheat kernel – often the germ, whose unstable healthy fats shorten the flour’s shelf life. One way to check this is on the flour’s Nutrition Facts Label. White (refined/enriched) flour has total fats of under 1%, while whole wheat flour has about 2.5% total fats. If the germ had been taken out, the fats would be similar to white flour.
In the U.S., federal regulations require that all of the wheat’s original bran, germ, and endosperm “remain unaltered” for flour to be called “whole wheat flour.” While we can’t vouch personally for every miller in the country, we call “False” on the claim that industrial whole wheat flour isn’t really whole grain.
If you’re reading this in Canada, however, be aware the Canadian law allows up to 5% of the original wheat kernel to be missing in “whole wheat flour” – so all of the germ and a bit of bran is often left out. If you’re Canadian, look for “whole grain whole wheat” – a term that would be redundant in the U.S.
It’s all good. Our conclusion is that all sources of whole grain flour contribute to making delicious breads, crackers, pasta and other foods, and you can’t go wrong with either fresh stone-ground flour or fresh, good-quality roller-milled flour. (You can even mill your own at home!) In fact, what happens to that flour after it leaves the mill may affect its health benefits more than anything that happens during milling. We’ll be looking into some of those factors in the coming weeks.
Whole Grain Flour – Sifting True from False | The Whole Grains Council
I would add that stone-ground flour often included (probably still does) a lot of little stone bits, to the point that often people's teeth got worn down by it over a lifetime. That's according to some accounts, anyway.
In medieval times in England, people often were paid with bread, and your status and job title determined how many and what kind of loaves you got. Higher status people got more and whiter loaves. I presume that they would trade extra loaves for other goods.
Indeed, from the stoneground flours I have used, I have found little bits of stone, but more frequently I find bits of husk. But I do like this treasure trove of extraneous material. I guess I would describe it as an honest product.
In the world of wine, MOG = Material other than grapes. Happily it works here too, "Material other than Grain"! Haha!
As a (hopefully) interesting aside, I had a 1kg bag of rye grain. It came in a heavy gauge sealed polythene bag.
Whenever I tried to grind a few hundred grams my Mockmill would soon block up and go no further without widening the stone gap and cleaning with a rice grind.
At first I thought the grain must be damp, but the bite was OK. On looking closer, the grain seemed a little dusty - and then I found a little black grain beetle wandering about in the bag! it must have very cleverly eaten the insides of the grains but left the husks more or less intact.
Lance
There is another single stream method not mentioned. UniFine, sold by Azure Standard and others. The grinding method is similar to what is produced in Wondermills ( from what I understand about both), and there are many different types of single-stream home mills that use stones, metal, and composites to grind grain to flour.
Makes me wonder how these fit into this discussion.
Question 1: what is important here is not what is theoretically possible to do with a stone mill or a roll mill, but what is the actual normality in the industry. If a miller goes through the hassle of getting and operating a stone mill, it's because he wants to give the client a superior product. That means he will operate the mill at a slow speed and will keep the temperature low (in the 40°C range if memory serves). Equally, roll mills can be operated at a low temperature, but one would seriously ask how many millers do that. The fact that it is theoretically possible to operate a stone mill at 90°C doesn't mean that anybody does that. On the other hand, a cheap white roll milled white flour can well be extracted at 90°C, because the buyer of such a product typically has no clue about the entire quality matter, and he just wants "flour".
Also, a stone ground flour is milled only once, whereas a kernel of grain passes through the mill many times, so the thermic shocks must be compounded.
In real life, yes, roll milled flour is ground at a much higher temperature, regardless of "theory", because a roll mill producer is probably catering to a public which only wants something that is cheap and works, and going faster is hotter, but it is cheaper, and works.
Question 2: answer is "false", but it must be noted that if flour is ground mill, then the result is always wholemeal flour and:
a) any "less wholemeal" product can be obtained only through sifting;
b) One can never achieve "white" flour with sifting a stone-ground flour, one can only obtain a "middle" flour. In the Italian legislation, flour is classified, from whiter, as: 00, 0, 1, 2, integrale. A stone ground flour is always integrale as it gets out of the stones, and it can be sifted to 2 or 1, never to 0 or 00. One can only arrive to "whitish" flour. I suppose this is due to the crushed germ which makes the flour grains stick to each other so that the clumps cannot be "unclumped" through sifting, but that's just my guess.
c) It is not possible to separate the germ through sifting of a stone ground flour. If a flour is stone ground, even if it is a "1", it certainly has all the germ.
On the other hand, in Italy, there is no requirement for a wholemeal flour to contain the germ. If a flour is integrale, but it is not stone ground, one has no direct means to know whether the germ was reconstituted into the flour or not. The trick of looking into the total fat is interesting! I use a roll milled wholemeal flour which has 2% fat content, which should indicate the miller reconstituted most of the germ into the final flour. But it has a 9-10 months expiry date, which is more similar to a "white" flour expiry date, and this somehow raises doubts.
Question 3: again, if you mill with stones, you get integrale, and you sift to obtain 2 or 1. You cannot get 0 or 00 by sifting. You need roll mills for that. A "proper white" flour can only come out of roll mills.
Question 4: modern steel rolls will produce all the grain content in different "heaps", and it is always possible to mix the heaps together to get the total content of the kernel. The question is whether this is actually done, as the germ will greatly reduce the expiry date. Depending on local legislation, millers might have the option to leave the germ out, and use it.
This is not always the case, I think, though it might be so for wheat flours. I have read that one difference between Italian polenta flour and US stone-ground cornmeal is that Italian millers reduce the maize grains through several stages in contrast to the US where typically a single stage is used.
Yes, also home millers grind the kernels in stages rather than in one step. If I get it right, this is to reduce the fatigue of the motor, but also to reduce the temperature of the flour.
What I mean is that the "single pass" in a roll mill cannot be compared to the temperature of the flour in a stone mill, because in a roll mill one cannot help doing several passes, and each pass "cooks" the flour, whereas in a stone mill one can make one pass, or he can make many passes, but in this case the reason is to "cook" the flour even less.
Again, this is one area where in theory a roll mill can produce a high quality flour (just make it run very slowly), but in practice a miller doesn't buy a roll mill to use it at 10% of its speed, whereas a miller buys a stone mill exactly because he is catering to a "niche" buyer and cares more about quality, IMO.
What theory?
The article states: "Research shows, though, that stone mills generally operate at much higher temperatures than roller mills”. I take this to mean, from studies that have investigated these types of milling, this is the consensus that was found. I agree, what is done "on the ground" is the ultimate truth of things but there must be an objective point of view.
In a case-by-case basis there is considerable room for varying results, since there are many variables that influence temperature. I.e. the gap between mill stones and equally the gap between rollers. However, "generally" it is the case that stone milling can subject the grain and extracted flour to temperatures higher than that of roller milling. I have long understood this to be the case. For curiosity, I searched and quickly found several studies that determined the same conclusion.
Your speculation ironically is in fact exactly theory. You put emphasis on speed, but by design roller mills can afford to be fast. Stone mills create more friction and as the operation continues the heat will continue to build and the stone can hold the heat. With roller mills grain passes through them at speed, so much so, that the contact time is a fraction of a second and dissipated over several rollers, some grooved, some smooth.
On the other points:
Certainly, innovation of roller milling has allowed for the possibility of complete endosperm separation (or mostly, since the aleurone layer is strongly fused to the bran). And sure, with stone milling the germ is somewhat melted into the flour.
Indeed, it seems there is no legal stipulation of wholemeal (~100% extraction) in Italy. There are however legal definitions in most English-speaking countries (US, UK, Canada, AUS, NZ). Here in the UK, and I'm sure the US too, wholewheat / wholemeal (100% extraction) roller milled flour is quite common. I too, found the comment regarding fat content to be insightful. Still, you're right to wonder about shelf life. There are technical ways in which to deal with the instability of wheat germ.
The answers are available with researching...
I am not a miller, so I am not into the details of the trade.
It is the general consensus here in Italy that stone ground flour produces flour which is less warm. This particular source ("Il Fatto Alimentare", a "scientific" site about food) claims real stone-ground mills operate at 30°C when operating at 90-100 rounds per minute. This same source also mentions another kind of horizontal grinding, not properly "stone" ground, which produces a higher flour heating. This second type is probably what is prevalent abroad and what your study mentions.
The Italian consumer, when the diction "stone ground" is used, understands - and expects - the flour to be ground at low temperature. It is possible that some producers are "cheating" on this expectation, that is not regulated by the law (just like the "integrale" flour is defined in a very sloppy way).
For what I understand, the faster the roll mill (or the stone mill), the higher the temperature the flour will have. Your idea that a faster-operating rolling mill creates less heat on the flour, due to the lesser contact time, is surprising to me, and goes against what I read around. A source I read - an Italian miller who uses both stone and roll mills - explicitly says that roll mills can produce low-temperature flour, IF operated at low speed.
100% extraction is rare in Italy also for wholemeal flour, because most grains would give too high an ash value and therefore would not be marketable as "wholemeal flour". A mill sells this as "macinato 100% di grano". Basically, some sifting is required for stone-ground flour as well. This is due to the Italian legislation focusing on ashes rather than on % of extraction. I don't know about Spanish, German, French legislation but those tend to be quite similar to the Italian ones due to EU harmonization policies (which are a work in progress though, so flour might not have been involved, as strange as it may seem). Some French, German, Spanish user could inform us regarding this. I generally expect food legislation to be pretty aligned within the EU.
The germ can be stabilized through a thermal treatment, and this is what some stone-ground flour is also subjected to. No thermal treatment is neutral in terms of product quality. (And yes, one might argue that, if the stone-ground flour is subjected to a thermal treatment to stabilize it, then this defeats the expectation itself of the flour to be milled at low temperature).
Having just discovered that I can salvage my bread machine, I will certainly invest in a stone mill for the home :-) .
https://ilfattoalimentare.it/macine-a-pietra-farina.html
As a side note, I tried to read the "scientific research" you quote, but this is not available, so I don't know how they arrive to the conclusion that stone-ground flour is generally milled at a higher temperature than roll mill flour. This is not what people expect when they pay a premium for stone-ground flour.
Also, I would be wary about the "scientific research" rhetoric. Science is not neutral and people quoting "science" is probably not. This whole grain council has a "mission" to encourage the consumption of wholemeal flour, and might be culturally skewing into playing down the differences in quality between a €1,2/kg flour and a €3,6/kg flour, because what they aim is at pushing "wholemeal" as is. It is common knowledge (or prejudice?) that wholemeal flour should be organically grown, but I don't see this mentioned in their site. This leads me to believe that their general culture is more toward "wholemeal and that's it" rather than "good quality wholemeal". Downplaying the difference of stone grinding would be coherent with this general cultural orientation of the organization.
To state it more clearly, this organization benefits from millers adhering to its campaign and applying their "stamp" on their products. They aim at getting as many producers as possible into this "stamp" thing of theirs. They are not interesting in emphasizing where quality lies. They would rather spread the gospel "roll milled is better" because roll mills is what the vast majority of producers use.
Stone milling is more abrasive. More abrasion, more friction. More friction, more heat. It's an inescapable fact of the mechanics of the natural world.
It is not in any miller’s interest to ruin the baking performance of the flour and so either way the miller will be looking to avoid excess heat, either when using stone or using roll cylinders. Although exceptions exist where the flour is purposely harshly milled (often with stone), such as chapati flour which actually benefits from being overheated. For bakers, this flour would be knackered but for chapati it improves it performance.
Excess heat is very detrimental damaging the constituents of the flour, including the proteins. The most technologically high-performance flours come from roller milling not stone. There is good reason for this because roller mills process the grain more temperately, in stages over several rolls. There are many factors that will affect the temperature of milled flour, for instance:
Grain hardness – Harder grains being tougher will increase friction by not yielding as easily as soft grains.
Tempering – Tempered grain with increased moisture content become softer.
It is quite normal to temper grain before roller milling but not typical with stone milling which normally uses dry un-tempered grain as far as I have read.
Roller milling cylinders can be actively cooled by passing water through them, while with stone milling there is no recognised techniques to cool the stones while in operation.
In terms of technology, humans have come a long way since learning to spark a fire by striking stones together. The development of roller mills was an innovative modernization that allowed us to advance milling techniques. While Stone Milling has also evolved to make improvements in processing the grain it is more functionally and technologically limited.
At the end of the day the two types give different results, each have pros and cons. But the fact remains that stone milling is more susceptible to excess heat than roller milling. No agenda, just fact. The Scientific approach (quantitatively objective observations) inherently do not lie, people do.
Excerpts from a literature review looking into the milling of wheat, stone vs roller:
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5.1 Strategies for improving stone milling
5.1.1 Keep the milling temperature as low as possible and avoid heating
Prabhasankar and Rao (2001) found that the key disadvantage of SM was that it generated considerable heat (due to friction), which damaged starch, protein, and unsaturated fatty acids. Their study found a slight degradation in protein, in samples milled at 55 and 85 °C using stone and plate mills. However, data regarding the effects on other nutrients were not supported by appropriate statistical analyses, and no information was given about other nutraceutical components. Nevertheless, it is clearly important to keep temperatures low during SM, in order to avoid heating that could lead to nutrient loss. This observation is supported by the findings described in section 4.2, which highlighted the fact that SM has less severe effects on macronutrients and micronutrients than does RM (at low temperatures and low stone rotational speed). Given that SM maintains the natural proportions of bran, middlings, and germ in whole wheat flour, and the consequent marketing advantages (Di Silvestro et al., 2014), systems need to be developed that can cool down the stones used in SM, following the model of existing systems used for cooling in RM.
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5.2 Strategies for improving roller milling
Both the literature and the evolution in milling techniques confirm the advantages of RM compared to SM. The first advantage relates to better efficiency and flexibility. As reported by Doblado-Maldonado et al. (2012), efficiency was improved by narrowing the gap and using smooth, rather than corrugated, rollers during reduction. Flexibility is another important advantage. The diameter, surface structure, rotational and differential speeds of rollers can all be configured (Meuser, 2003). Moreover, milling and reduction can be varied for each roller and for different raw materials (Doblado-Maldonado et al., 2012). This wide range of adjustable operating parameters is not possible in SM. The second advantage is lower heat generation compared to SM (and the ability to install cooling systems). The last (but not least) advantage is linked to the ability to separate bran and middlings. Unlike SM, which can only output whole wheat flour, RM can separate the bran, middlings, and germ from the endosperm fraction for further processing (Srivastava et al., 2006; Chun-Feng et al., 2006; Gili et al., 2017). These strategies can result in inhibited lipase activity, which is concentrated in the bran, thus extending the shelf life of whole wheat flours (through enzyme inhibition), without influencing the flour’s functional properties (Doblado-Maldonado et al., 2012). Wheat conditioning is an improvement strategy that is also applicable to RM. Strategies specific to RM are described in the following subsections.
Conclusions & future trends
This review has highlighted the importance of selecting the optimal milling technique, as a function of the desired flour quality, dough rheology, and bread characteristics (Yu et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2018; Kihlberg et al., 2004; Albergamo et al., 2018; Palpacelli et al., 2007; Ficco et al., 2016; Cubadda et al., 2009). We have noted that only a few studies have specifically compared SM and RM techniques, which have pointed up the need for extensive comparative studies of their different effects. Nevertheless, this review has revealed several important observations regarding the effects of the two milling techniques.
The benefits of SM are: its simplicity (Zhang et al., 2018); the higher concentration of macroelements, microelements, and polyphenols in flours milled at low temperature and at low stone rotational speed (Albergamo et al., 2018; Cubadda et al., 2003; Ficco et al., 2016; Liu et al., 2018); and a marketing advantage (Di Silvestro et al., 2014). Other, potentially positive effects are its ability to reduce mycotoxins (Palpacelli et al., 2007), the higher protein and fibre contents of the flour (Liu et al., 2018), and higher whole wheat bread volume (Kihlberg et al., 2004). However, these results need to be validated by further comparative studies. On the other hand, it is difficult to manage milling parameters, and there are other negative effects, notably, heat generation (Prabhasankar & Rao, 2001), not optimal falling number, and poorer dough rheological properties (Kihlberg et al., 2004), indicating that there is significant room for technological improvement.
On the other hand, RM also has clear advantages in terms of efficiency and flexibility (Doblado-Maldonado et al., 2012; Meuser, 2003). Positive effects include lower heat generation, optimal falling number, and better dough rheological performance (Kihlberg et al., 2004; Posner, 2003). Although this technique has already been significantly improved at the technological level, much can still be done to improve performance.
In our opinion, this review has not declared a “winner”, because both SM and RM techniques have advantages and disadvantages. The optimal milling system is a function of the aim of the process, keeping in mind business needs and flour product demand. For example, SM is the best option if the aim is to produce flour with high nutritional content (macroelements, microelements, polyphenols, and fibre) and market appeal. On the other hand, RM is best if the miller has to provide large quantities of refined white flour with more preferred dough rheological properties and higher kneading resistance. To support these different aims, many modern mills are equipped with both SM and RM. Finally, it is important to emphasize that the milling technique is only one of many factors that affect flour quality, dough rheological properties, and bread characteristics. Agronomic practices, the selection of the right cultivar, and optimal wheat moisture content are just some of the other parameters that need to be considered. A final consideration is the choice of production/supply chain.
Stone milling versus roller milling: A systematic review of the effects on wheat flour quality, dough rheology, and bread characteristics [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs.2020.01.008]
So, I don't know whom to pay attention to now. Some sources specify 30°C at 90 rpm with stone grinding. Those sources should be totally unreliable?
Yes, roll mills can be equipped with cooling devices. How many of them are?
Roll mills can produce high quality flour - I don't doubt - but stone milling have a "marketing advantage". Where does this marketing advantage come from? Is the consumer stupid? Or is the result of "legacy" roll mills, and roll milling practices, that have now tainted roll mills as being able to produce high-quality flour? (that's possible). But if stone milling gives flour with a higher nutritional content: how is that compatible with a heat damage to the flour?
I certainly never thought or said that it is any baker's interest to aim for low-quality flour. But higher quality comes with high cost. Roll mills can more easily lend themselves to low-cost (lower quality) milling practices. One applies those milling practices to low-cost low-quality grains to begin with.
What I see is that high quality flour (the really delicious one, and that's normally sold in plastic vacuum bags not in thin paper bags) is 95% of the time ground milled. This might be due to the "marketing advantage", the perception of higher quality, but I suspect the marketing advantage is due to the fact that "roll milling" reminds of industrial practices and is associated with the €1/kg supermarket flour.
Truth be told, I saw a flour producer who produces a "high-end" flour tipo 1, "without additives" and he specifies he uses roll mills. It is curious that he specifies "roll milled" in the package, which is probably a result of what you say, i.e. people should not be "afraid" of the impact of roll mills on quality. Yet, I suspect he would not do that if he hadn't this other quality claim, "without additives".
Ultimately, I rest my case: I never said that it isn't possible to obtain very good milling from a roll mill, but I don't believe sources that say that stone mills are inherently hotter, and cannot produce a flour which does not degrade proteins, because high-end quality producers would have switched to roll milling since long.
Your text says: "SM is the best option if the aim is to produce flour with high nutritional content (macroelements, microelements, polyphenols, and fibre) and market appeal".
That means the consumer is either more nutritionally conscious that it really is, or is driven by prejudice.
I am convinced that people at large are not so much interested in "nutritional content", and if they pay more, they want to taste that higher price in their plate. All food industry works like this. There is a difference between a €30/kg Parmesan and a €10/kg "hard cheese", that buyers clearly recognize. It's not only the "red seal" to command a higher price. Yes, advertisement can distort consumer perception of value, but small producers' flour for home-made bread making is not something that can command a high (or any) advertising budget. That flour is sold on quality. And it is of superior quality, and it is almost always ground milled. So it must be possible to grind, with a stone mill, at the best possible quality, without any heat damage to the flour. Besides, "nutritional content" is certainly one of the dimensions of quality. A flour of higher nutritional content is a flour of higher quality!
"On the other hand, RM is best if the miller has to provide large quantities of refined white flour with more preferred dough rheological properties and higher kneading resistance. "
But that's the entire point! If the miller wants to provide "large quantities" of "refined flour" (supermarket segment) with a higher kneading resistance (that's what the average user wants, a flour that it is easier to bake, which has less bran, or a bran which is more minutely ground) then yes, roll mills are the obvious choice. That's 90% of flour sold and 90% of millers do that, use roll mills.
I think this thread has wandered off into some indefinite meadowland. It has reminded me of a couple of things, though.
- Throughout history, most flour-eating people have wanted whiter flour when they could get it and when they could afford it. Reasons may have varied: better keeping, status, being associated with being "refined", a preference for lighter bread products, etc.
- Before roller milling, whiter flour was more expensive because it took more work to make, and the quantity of flour was always less for the heavily bolted kinds.
- With roller milling, white flour is cheaper to make than whole wheat. This is because the outer layers have to be removed first, and then stored and (for "whole wheat") added back later - more steps = more cost.
This is a semantically tricky issue. Yes, in the US "whole wheat" flour includes the bran and other outer layers added back in. But that doesn't mean it's what you might be expecting. I have sifted supermarket whole wheat flour, and what sifts out are wide, thin, flat flakes of bran, almost like small cereal flakes**. A lot of flakes. Not at all like a stone-ground flour would be like. There must be some other non-bran materials in the flour too, because after this sifting the flour still has a darker color. So what does it even mean for roller-milled flour to have "all" the bran, germ and other components restored? It's even possible (I don't know but I am fairly sure this is actually done) for the miller to save the bran and germ streams from one lot of wheat and add them to a stream of white flour from another lot.
It must be much like the dairy industry. Modern dairies separate the butterfat out near the beginning of processing. Then calibrated amounts of butterfat are added back to get various kinds of products, such as 2% milk, 4% milk, light cream, heavy cream (US terms), etc. Is "whole" milk really "whole"? No, but it has an amount of butterfat that the regulatory agencies have decided is representative of actual whole milk, taking into account what consumers expect and producers are able to produce.
** When I make WW bread from this kind of flour, I sift the flakes out, and either add them back later as a soaker, or I don't use them at all. The breads rise quite well, since the big sharp flakes aren't interfering with the gluten.
I think the milk comparison makes a lot of sense. Milk is "homogenized", i.e. it is brought to a uniform standard, whereas nature would give us summer milk as quite different from winter milk.
I don't understand how, in the US legislation, the provision "The proportions of the natural constituents of such wheat, other than moisture, remain unaltered." is considered. In Milk, an homogenized milk has unaltered natural constituents, yet they are "altered" in the sense that batches are made uniform.
If a US office takes a bag of US wholemeal flour to determine whether it meets the requirements of Law, how can it know if the flour is 100% produce of the grains it comes from, without any sifting? The office doesn't know the original grain, its protein content, its bran content, its germ content etc. One would expect the Law to give objective laboratory measures that, if satisfied, would make the flour compliant with the definition given by the law.
This is what is normally done with milk, or cheese.
Besides, the US definition compels flour producers to adopt a different definition for those flours who require a small bran sifting just to align them with flours which are already on the market but, coming from different grains, require no sifting.
Overall, is quite strange that, in a baking forum, we are debating what flour really is, I mean it is quite interesting that "flour" can be so different in different legislations, yet being so similar at first glance.
I had a look at additives allowed in the UK, and those can be compared with additives allowed in the US and in Italy. In Italy, only a very limited number of additives are allowed to flour, and those are generic additives, allowed for all food preparation, that don't require a mention in the label. In the UK, wholemeal flour cannot have any additive for what I gather, but all other flours can have many more additives than in Italy, up to adding vitamins which are, for certain flours, compulsory. In the US, wholemeal flour as well can contain additives, and they can contain additives such as malted barley, or enzymes, that would not be allowed in Italy for "flour" and would not be allowed in the UK for wholemeal flour at least.
This also probably explains why bread machines can produce wholemeal "bricks", because they are tested - and the instruction manual is accordingly written - in certain markets, and then the flour being different in other markets, the result can be disastrous. I add dried (barley) malt extract and gluten to my wholemeal flour, and I find it necessary, whereas in the US those ingredients might already be present in a product which is labelled as "flour". I also find that salt, and a lot of kneading, are necessary to produce good bread. I obtained many bricks before discovering that. Don't trust your instruction manual :-)
The clumps you observe in the wholemeal flour of the supermarket, that can be sifted away and that give you a darker flour, should be caused by the oil in the germ, which once reconstituted into the flour cannot be separated again.
I don't observe clumps. When I sift these rollermilled "whole wheat" US flours I find thin flakes, which I assume are flakes of bran.
The US legal standard for whole wheat flour is in part (see https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=137.200)
I imagine there have been regulatory or legal cases that deal with what the phrase "proportions of the natural constituents of such wheat" actually means in practice. That's usually how these things work. I also found the following about the phrase (see https://www.gristandtoll.com/flour-terminology-101/):
The post continues with what seems to be an interpretation by the author, one which I don't think is warranted.
As to milk, in the US "homogenized" does not mean what you seem to think. It means that the fat droplets are broken up into such small fragments that they remain in suspension without clumping. In the US, there is no requirement that it be "unaltered". The actual requirement is
My point here is not to win a contest of nit-picking details. It is to suggest that trying to guess the meanings of various standardized words and phrases is not likely to be useful. That includes terms such as "whole wheat", "whole grain", "wholemeal", "milk", etc.Homogenized has the same meaning in Italian, I was wrong. The term to describe the "levelling out" of constituents between batches is another one, which doesn't come to my mind at the moment*. I confused the words. In any case, it is allowed (at least in Italy) to take fat from one batch and transfer it to another batch, to equalize the fat content of batches, and keep it as stable as possible, and for non-fresh milk this is also made to keep fat content uniform during the year.
One might expect that millers use a similar strategy with bran, trying to obtain the same bran content for a certain product, and sifting more or less - depending on batches, season etc. - to maintain a constant product.
So the US definition
<<“The proportions of the natural constituents of such wheat…” means all parts that make up a wheat kernel must be present in the flour.>>
would actually allow a lot of room to the US producer regarding the recomposition of wholemeal flour after roll milling, if I get it right.
The bran should be darker than the rest of the kernel, at least as far as soft wheat is concerned, so if what you sift out of the flour is bran, you should obtain a paler flour. The fact that you obtain a darker flour made me think that's the effect of the oils in the germ, but that was just a hypothesis.
* Found it, it is called "standardizzazione": https://www.inalpi.it/il-latte-e-davvero-uguale-tutto-lanno-come-dice-letichetta/
It really is the equivalent of the reconstitution of flour: the milk is immediately separated and is then reconstituted according to specific ratios.
A small misunderstanding, I think. After I sifted out the flakes from the roller-milled WW flour, what remained was darker than white flour, but not as dark as before the sifting.
Yes, if you sift bran from wholemeal flour, you still don't obtain white flour.
This text (in Italian, but I suppose it's easy to translate, these AI days) shows the various "frazioni cruscàli", or "bran fractions". The outer parts, called "cruscàmi", (translatable as "things more or less related to bran") are in turn of many kinds. The crusca proper, the outer bran, is itself divided into 6 layers.
I think it is interesting because it shows clear pictures of the result of roll milling. In a roll-milled proper wholemeal flour, the fractions are all reconstituted, possibly leaving out part of the bran, and/or the germ. Yet, It is also possible, for the Italian law, to only use white flour and outer bran: provided that the ash content is 1,3-1,7%, it's wholemeal flour. So, wholemeal flour can be assembled in more than one way. Normally, though, it wouldn't be white flour + bran, but it would include the intermediate layers.
The picture with the two heaps of bran (roll mill and stone mill) is IMHO very interesting.
https://www.mulinopadano.it/blog/approfondimenti/cos-e-la-crusca/
If a source says they can extract flour at 30C with a stone mill running at 90rpm, I have no need to doubt that. However, I would be asking questions about factors not mentioned that greatly impact temperature, such as at what temperature is the ambient? Is this in the summer or winter? At what feed rate of grain? Duration - how long does it stay at 30C before the temperature creeps up? Or, how effectively has the grain been ground? Will it need to be passed again after cooling down if allowed to?
Importantly, the subject on the table regarding temperature is rather from the viewpoint of the technology. Based on its method of operation, stone milling exerts more intense friction on the grain and for a longer duration, in an isolated location. The risk of overheating is that much greater compared to roller milling. But each technology has pros and cons and indeed, there is no winner here.
The evidence is abundant and clear. The text I posted is from a literature review meaning the writers did all the work for us and researched as much documented evidence as they could find, and they disclose details of this too. The discussion includes some conflicting accounts as any good literature should, I know that's what secured me my highest marks when studying at university.
If you would like I can send you a link to the full paper (PM me if you do). It is a very thorough review! And I have just discovered there is a part 2!
In any case, like you said, it is what is possible that matters.
thanks for the research, I wrote you a private message with my mail.
I think it's the miller's duty-task to keep an eye on the flour temperature. When the temperature of the flour climbs above a pre-determined threshold, the miller should stop the milling and let the stones cool down.
In an industrial setting, I would not be surprised if the stones are washed with fresh water, and dried with hot air. In a more artisanal setting, the miller should have a mill which is able to satisfy its flour needs while operating in small batches which do not overheat the stones, or the stones are rotated at such a slow speed that they don't overheat.
In ancient times, when mills were powered by mules, or men, the burrs could go on for hours, and the only thing overheated were the labourers who did all the work :-)
It may be true in some cases where the ash of certain wholemeal flours might exceed the maximum 1.7 decreed in Italian legislation, however with respect to Triticum aestivum (common wheat), I find it unlikely the ash of wholemeal flour will exceed the maximum. I believe this commentary is another example of hyped up misinformation, which is geared at diminishing roller milling technology.
I contacted a mill here in the the UK, and they stated, as expected, that wholemeal flour whether stoneground or roller milled is 100% extraction. "What comes out, is what goes in". Also they do not treat the germ in anyway.
From the same mill, they produce a stoneground wholemeal flour with an ash level of about 1.5. I would expect Italian grown wheat to be at a similar level...
EDIT: to add...
Reading the Italian legislation again, it seems from the wording, that "integrale" is implied to be wholemeal since by implication the decree states that type 00,0,1,2 are products obtained from sifting while "Integrale" is obtained directly from the grain.
The information I quoted is, IIRC, from a miller who works with both stone mills and roll mills. He is actually contrasting the general perception that roll milled flour is worse.
In the UK there is not, for what I know, a law-defined limit on ashes for wholemeal flour. Actually, in the UK "wholemeal flour" = "100% extraction".
In Italy, "Tipo Integrale" means, basically, "ashes between 1,3 and 1,7%" and a mill can take "Tipo 00" flour, add bran up to reaching an ash value of 1,3%, and that would qualify as "Tipo integrale" and, mind you, have no germ at all.
Similarly, a mill could obtain, from the same grains, a flour with 1,7% ashes and a more sifted flour with 1,3% ashes, and they would be quite different, but they would all come from the same grains and would both comply with the definition of "Tipo integrale" given by the law. The law defines that the way the flour is "reconstituted" must be specified NOT for the flour itself, but for the bakery product only.
In Italy, you can go into a supermarket and buy "biscotti integrali" or "gallette integrali" ecc. and read the list of ingredients and you will often find something like: "Farina integrale 60% (farina di frumento tipo 0 70%, cruschello 30%)", Farina di frumento ..."
Because they said "tipo integrale" or "integrale" in the general description, they have to specify in the ingredient list how much "wholemeal flour" there is and also "what" this wholemeal flour is.
In this case, Farina integrale is used for 60% for the grist (I presume, or it might be 60% of the total ingredient weight) and this farina integrale is, in fact, a farina ricostituita in which the assembly to obtain the farina "tipo integrale" contained only tipo 0, for 70% and "cruschello", which is the part immediately under the bran (could be translated as "little bran", it's a part of the roughage, for the remaining 30%).
You see that this is very different from the UK definition of wholemeal: UK is what one would actually expect, whereas the Italian legislation sells you a white flour with enough roughage as "integrale". This is probably the reason why Italians tend to see stone-ground flour as superior, because it is what one thinks it is (if we except some possible elimination of some "excess" bran) and very importantly it certainly contains all the germ, whereas a roll-milled flour, even though is "tipo integrale", might contain no germ at all!
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Reading the Italian legislation again, it seems from the wording, that "integrale" is implied to be wholemeal since by implication the decree states that type 00,0,1,2 are products obtained from sifting while "Integrale" is obtained directly from the grain.
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I don't know where you get this impression from. If you use a roll mill, you never obtain flour "directly" from the grain, you always obtain the different components in separate heaps, and you then "reconstitute" the flour you want employing different proportions (or none) from the different heaps.
If you grind with a stone mill on the other hand what you obtain is always the 100% extraction, and then you sift in order to obtain a "tipo integrale" of the desidered ash content, or a tipo 2, tipo 1. It is difficult and rare - and it doesn't make much sense commercially - that a tipo 0 is obtained from the sifting of a stone-ground flour, I suppose this is because the oils in the germ prevent a high degree of sifting.
A roll mill separates the germ in a different "heap", while a stone mill crushes the kernels so that the germ remains glued in the flour. Stone-ground flours always have all the germ, whereas roll-milled flours are not guaranteed to have any germ at all.
I get the impression from the text within the legislation. It clearly separates the definitions into two types, sifted flour (Tipo 00,0,1 and 2) and Integrale in defining the products obtained from milling the grain.
Regardless of how roller milling operates, 100% extraction is perfectly possible and a normal process. The legislation is defining the product itself with respect to the resulting flour obtained from the grain.
As evidenced by the Mill I contacted here in the UK, they were unequivocal in saying that wholemeal = 100% extraction and that includes roller milled wholemeal flour.
As we learnt, if the germ has been removed this can be confirmed by consulting the fat content on the product label. Without germ, the fat content will be only around 1%. Much higher than that, germ is likely to be present.
I don't understand why things would be so different in Italy when creating these products.
"I don't understand why things would be so different in Italy when creating these products."
I don't either!
One would expect a wholemeal flour to be always reconstituted to 100% extraction if roll milled and one would expect germ to be always present in a wholemeal flour.
The Italian legislator thought differently.
This might be due, perhaps, to wanting to encourage the consuption of bran and if they adopted a rigid definition of "wholomeal" they would have somehow restricted or discouraged the production of wholemeal products.
The definition the Italian legislation adopted for "tipo integrale" is of a flour which is easy to work with (not too much bran, which makes baking more difficult), easy to store (no obligation to include the germ, which reduces the shelf duration) and easy to use in baked products: you put some bran in biscuits, crackers etc. and you sell them as "wholemeal", people know it's healthier, and buy it.
I don't know about the UK legislation on baked products. Here in Italy supermarkets are packed full with baked products sold as "integrale" which are not in reality wholemeal, and should be termed just "enriched with bran", and that's the same for "artisanal bakeries", all will sell you "pane integrale" which is entirely "fake". But such is life. The Italian legislation on flours and baked products is certainly misleading the consumer.
Just to be clear, I never said that a roll-milled flour cannot be reconstituted to 100% extraction (within the 1,7% ashes). It can, but it also can not. The law should define as "integrale" only flour with the germ, I should not guess whether there is the germ by reading the nutritional label, which is not compulsory for flours in any case and is often missing.
Again, the Italian consumer giving a preference to stone-milled flour has a good reason to do so, in Italy.
Regarding baked products, look e.g. here: "cracker integrali", all what they have is "6% cruschello".
https://www.carrefour.it/p/carrefour-classic-cracker-integrali-16-x-35-g/8012666065592.html
Italy should create a "Tipo 3" which would be the present "Tipo Integrale", and a new "Tipo Integrale" which would dictate the presence of all the germ at the very minimum, and would not place any limit to the ash content (as in the UK).
This might be a matter of semantics, but a roller mill's first job is to crack and remove the bran, and then the germ, etc. Patent flour is produced in a later pass, and then the near-waste and waste streams. If you collected all those streams and mixed them together, and they had not been mixed with streams from other lots of wheat, you could say that you have 100% extraction.
I wonder how often that is actually done...
There can't be any missing parts with 100% extraction. I don't think a customised blend of bran, germ and endosperm that doesn't use all the fed grain would be legally acceptable.
Doblado-Maldonado, A.F., Pike, O.A., Sweley, J.C. and Rose, D.J., 2012. Key issues and challenges in whole wheat flour milling and storage. Journal of cereal science, 56(2), pp.119-126.
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I don't think a customised blend of bran, germ and endosperm that doesn't use all the fed grain would be legally acceptable.
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Again, that depends on the Country. In Italy the maximum ash content for flour of Triticum aestivum (grano tenero)* is 1,7% and, according to a Miller, most wheat cultivars cultivated in Italy would give a higher number of ashes and must be sifted to bring the product within the requirements of Law for a flour. Else, the product can be sold, but not as "wholemeal flour". That miller sells this product as "Macinato 100% di grano tenero".
Besides that, for what I know in modern production a flour is often assembled from different kind of grains. The producer aims to obtain certain characteristics (W, P, L, falling number etc.) that make that flour ideal for the different usages: biscuits, panettone, bread, pizza, focaccia etc.
The miller "builds" a product aiming at certain characteristics by blending flours from different cultivars. In turn, each of these flours is the result of a fraction of the kernel, if obtained with a roll mill.
Even if the law had such requirement to include in the flour "all the product", that wouldn't be easily legally verifiable, as the characteristics of the source kernels wouldn't be immediately available in a blended product.
I don't understand how can, in the US, an organism "verify" this, unless the millers are forced to take a huge administrative burden. I take the affirmation "AACC International has defined whole wheat flour as being prepared from wheat (other than durum) such that the proportions of the intact grain – the bran, germ, and endosperm – remain unaltered (AACC International, 1999)." as a general guideline rather than literally (although, I might be wrong). In any case, that is the "American" case, and the US has different laws.
E.g. in the US and in the UK the fortification of flour is in certain cases compulsory, and for what I remember that's always forbidden in Italy.
(https://www.nostrofiglio.it/gravidanza/salute-e-benessere/alimenti-fortificati-con-acido-folico)
I saw a Farina Integrale recently with 3% fat (that's a lot of germ, 50% more than usual wholemeal flours in Italy, which are around 1,9 - 2%). I supposed the producer "blended in" some germ from kernels destined to produce white flour. That would have been an interesting product to try, but I didn't buy it as it wasn't organically grown.
* For what I understand, grano tenero and soft wheat are false friends. In the US, soft wheat and hard wheat are both Triticum aestivum, for what I get. In Italy, grano duro, "hard wheat", is Triticum durum, what is called Durum in the US. All Triticum Aestivum in Italy is always "grano tenero" regardless of protein content.
tenero = soft, duro = hard, but what in the US is "hard wheat", is "grano tenero" in Italy, being Triticum aestivum. I am under the impression that in the US people say "hard wheat" when they mean Triticum aestivum with high protein content.
My comment was a reply to tpassin. The context was specifically regarding US and other countries that define wholemeal flour in some way. I wasn't talking about Italy this time ;)
AACC International is a trade association and whatever it says about the details of milling wheat does not actually have the force of law. In practice, most wheat flour in the US has been blended, reconstituted from streams, etc. Another trade association, the North American Millers' Association, writes (https://namamillers.org/consumer-resources/what-is-milling/):
And even the passage from AACC International only mentions "proportions", not actual grain streams.
The actual US legal requirements for whole wheat flour are
(see 21CFR137.200)
So, by the legal definition, in the US "Whole wheat flour" by definition does not include the entire contents of the wheat kernels. Whether a small water mill that sells sacks labeled "whole wheat" knows this or follows the legal definition is something I don't know. I do know that the stone-ground flour from my local mill, Locke's mill, is labeled "wheat flour", not "whole wheat flour".
21CFR137.105 defines "flour like this:
In view of the latitude of the legal and trade definitions, I don't think it's useful to try to parse out or infer very many details of flour manufacture from descriptive phrases such as "whole wheat". To take one example, Barton Springs labels its "Butler's Gold Flour" flour as "Stone Ground", not "whole wheat", although the shopping page on their web site also refers to it as "Whole Wheat Flour". "Stone Ground" is not one of the legal designations specified in 21CFR137.
So, by the legal definition, in the US "Whole wheat flour" by definition does not include the entire contents of the wheat kernels
I believe you are reading it incorrectly! The the mention of sifting is a means to ensure there is bran present - it is a qualitative stipulation. It doesn't mean or say that anything is removed. It clearly states that the constituent parts remain unaltered. That is not ambiguous, it is clear. The only difference between grain and flour is moisture.
It's true that the sifting step is purely for testing purposes. I knew that but overlooked that the test does not require sifting of the product itself outside of testing.
The definition in the CFR doesn't actually say that "the constituent parts remain unaltered". It reads "The proportions of the natural constituents of such wheat, other than moisture, remain unaltered". I'm fairly sure there is a body of practice and rulings that have settled what the phrase "the proportions of ..." means from a regulatory point of view. I'm also sure that I can't guess or intuit what the meaning is.
As a practical matter the grinding process is going to produce some loss, and it's unlikely that the loss will be shared across all the components equally. So the phrase has to be interpreted in some fashion, and that interpretation is probably well known in the industry.
I believe the sieves are used here for particle size classification of the flour: 90% of the flour is smaller than 2.36 mm and 50% is smaller than 850 µm. This wording is similar to that I have seen used in other industries. I'm not sure one can infer bran presence from the spec.
I also interpret the "unaltered" statement to mean that the whole wheat flour has the same proportions of constituents as the wheat kernel.
So, I was wrong, I think. After sending you the PDF I re-read it again and saw what you mean.
Art.1 comma 2 talks about the "direct" extraction of the flour, and art. 1 comma 1 talks about the "abburattamento", sifting. This is a strange language because "sifting" it's not used any more normally, it's just a different form of reconstitution using a roll mill, and "direct" is again never possible with a roll mill, a rolled mill is always "reconstituted" using the various heaps created by the roll mill.
Yet, it might well be that the law means that the germ must be present, and the bran must be present within a limit of 1,7% (but the miller can choose, evidently, to sift more and go down to 1,3%).
On the other hand, the admission of the diction "farina integrale di grano tenero" for the farina so called ricostituita (meaning, white + bran) is ONLY for the flour in the list of ingredients in a baked product, and not for the flour sold as flour.
A bread can have among the ingredient a "farina integrale" which is "fake", but a flour sold as "farina integrale" is always containing the germ, although sifting of the bran is admitted, provided that it doesn't go below 1,3% of ashes.
Yet, it is very curious that stone-milled flour often has "with the germ" in the label, even when it is "integrale". On the other hand, "with germ" is obviously an interesting claim for the consumer, and yet most wholemeal flours don't state it in the label, and they could and should if "direct milling" means "maintaining all the parts including the germ".
OK, I found the norm, is the circolare del Ministero delle Attività Produttive del 10 novembre 2003, n. 168.
It establishes an exception to the interpretation of the art. 2 of the 2001 DPR for final products.
Some information here: https://www.altalex.com/documents/news/2004/01/10/etichettatura-e-pubblicita-dei-prodotti-alimentari-i-chiarimenti-del-ministero
The Ministry arrives to writing the absurdity that the only thing that differentiates white flour from wholemeal flour is the bran:
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La crusca/cruschello sono, infatti, gli unici elementi che differenziano la farina di frumento integrale dalla farina di grano tenero non essendo, inoltre, vincolanti per utilizzazioni diverse dalla panificazione e dalla vendita diretta al consumatore i parametri previsti al comma 3 dell'art. 1 del decreto n. 187/2001.
Pertanto non ha rilevanza alcuna, ai fini dell'informazione al consumatore, la messa in evidenza che si tratta di «farina integrale di grano tenero» proveniente dai molini con i parametri previsti dalla norma suddetta oppure di «farina di frumento integrale» sempre proveniente dai molini ma con parametri diversi da quelli previsti dalla norma o, infine, di farina integrale ricostituita, all'interno dell'azienda utilizzatrice, con parametri uguali o diversi da quelli previsti dalla norma. I prodotti finiti sono tutti legali con caratteristiche organolettiche pressoche' identiche.
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Rollermill and stone grinding are not the only methods of turning grain into flour. As I mentioned earlier, there is at least one other method, the impact method used to produce Unifine flour. There may be others.
Many thanks for getting in touch. We are pleased to share with you the following answers to your queries, below:
I understand that wholemeal flour includes all parts of the wheat kernel and is equal to 100% extraction of the grain or as close to 100% as mechanically possible, and that nothing is taken away. Does this differ depending on whether roller milled, or stone milled?
No. Both include 100% of the whole grain.
Can roller milled wholemeal flour ever be the product of select constituent parts from different grain batches? It has been supposed that it could be possible to hold back separated bran or other non-endosperm parts and then reconstitute them with white flour from a different grain batch thus effecting wholemeal flour without using 100% of the mill-fed grain. Does this ever happen?
There are different ways to produce wholemeal flour. We grind the whole grain, other, larger mills produce white then re-blend the constituent parts.
Does stone milled wholemeal flour have a shorter shelf life compared to roller milled wholemeal flour and what steps if any are taken to stabilise the wheat germ? Is stone-milled flour more prone to oxidation?
Stone milling grinds the whole grain and there is no stabilisation of the wheatgerm. Oxidation begins the moment the grain is cracked open. We always recommend using wholemeal fresh, for the best flavours.
I understand that stone milling creates more friction compared to roller milling and the risk of overheating the flour is greater. To counter the risk of overheating, I understand you ground the grain very slowly, would you be willing to disclose further details?
Stone milling can create heat, particularly if the stones are set too closely. Both roller milled and stoneground are roughly 27 degrees Celsius, although we aspirate our stones which keeps them cooler. RPM is 120.
N.B. Questions and answers edited for brevity and clarity.