A stone mill grinds the whole kernel into whole-grain meal, and sifting that meal through finer and finer cloth removes bran and germ to make brown or white flour. The whiter the flour the longer it keeps and the less nutrition it carries, because the oily germ that spoils is also where much of the goodness is, so a village mills whole grain for the next one to two weeks and sifts only what it needs white.
Part of Community Grain Mill
The grades of flour a stone mill can make, from whole-grain meal to bolted white flour, how each is made by sifting, and what each is used for and how long it keeps.
One Mill, Four Products, Chosen At The Sieve
A wheat kernel has three parts: bran (the outer husk layers), germ (the oily embryo) and endosperm (the starchy center). A stone mill breaks all three together. What the flour is called depends on what the sieve removes afterwards, a scale the corpus lays out in four steps (Grinding and Milling).
| Product | What the sieve removes | Typical use | Keeping |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whole-grain meal | Nothing | Dense bread, porridge | Shortest |
| Brown flour | Most of the bran, germ stays | General bread | Moderate |
| White flour | Bran and germ | Fine bread, pastry | Longest |
| Coarse meal or grits | Nothing, coarse grind | Porridge, polenta, feed | Moderate |
The carrier’s bolting grades are: coarse bolt removing the largest bran (“first clear”), medium bolt removing most bran (about all-purpose), and fine bolt removing nearly all bran (closest to white) (Community Grain Mill).
The Trade Is Nutrition Against Keeping
The germ holds the oils that go rancid. That is why whole-grain flour spoils in weeks and white flour keeps for months. The wiki’s milling page says to use whole-grain flour within 1-2 weeks, or sieve out the germ for longer storage, while the carrier gives 2-4 weeks, or up to 2 months in a cool root cellar. Plan on the shorter figure when the store is warm, and treat the longer one as the best case in a cellar. See Whole Grain vs Sifted Flour for the arithmetic of what a village loses by sifting.
Nothing Sifted Out Is Waste
Bran and germ feed hens and pigs, or go back into porridge. The sieve changes where the nutrition goes; it does not destroy it.
What You Need
- A mill that can make a consistent coarse-to-fine grind (Runner and Bedstone Mechanics)
- Bolting cloth of different fineness (Bolting Cloth and Sifting Systems)
- Clean, dry grain (Grain Moisture and Milling Readiness)
- A cool, dry store for finished flour, off the floor and away from rodents
Method: From Meal To Grade
Step 1: Grind the whole grain at the gap that gives the texture you want.
Step 2: Sift once through coarse cloth to take out the largest bran. This is already a useful brown flour.
Step 3: Sift again through finer cloth if white flour is wanted. Each pass gives whiter, finer flour.
Step 4: Keep what you will use soon whole. Most of the village’s flour stays whole grain, milled a week or two at a time.
Common Mistakes
- Milling a season’s flour at once. Whole-grain flour goes rancid; mill little and often.
- Treating white flour as the goal. It is less nutritious, and the bran it discards must go to animals or the nutrition is lost.
- Sifting through a dirty cloth. Old flour in the weave contaminates the new.
Flour dust is explosive
A cloud of flour in air can explode if it meets a spark, a hot bearing or a flame, and a mill concentrates exactly that dust. Sweep surfaces often, ventilate, allow no open flame in the mill or bolting room, and never test for dust with a flame. The wiki’s mill note already lists brushing flour dust off all surfaces as a weekly task.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Whole Grain vs Sifted Flour - what each choice costs
- Combine with: Specialty Grinds: Cornmeal, Oat Flour - other grains, other rules