Healthy eating is a habit that begins with simple things, for example, choosing less refined flour that is closer to tradition. Almost as old as the history of humanity, stone grinding is done with two large overlapping wheels, which have special requirements of hardness, porosity and homogeneity. Stone ground flours are, therefore, an excellent alternative to the common use of double zero or type 0. They are wealthy in healthful properties and more reasonable for the human body. Why? We should figure out this moment.
What “Stone-Ground Flour” Means: The Recovery Of An Ancient Technique For A Taste Aimed At The Future
Stone ground flour is the result of milling cereals as it once was: the grains are crushed between two large stones, and the “whole body” crushing of the cereal allows you to obtain rich, tasty flours with a unique taste. The stone working happens gradually; our stone factories produce around 2 quintals of flour each hour against the numerous lots of a modern factory.
The millstones have slower rotation times, preventing the flour from overheating (80-100 rpm against 300-350 cylinders). The process, therefore, takes place at lower temperatures because the slow rotation does not generate sudden heat increases, avoiding the loss of the precious thermolabile trace elements of the grain.
What Are The Benefits Of Stone-Ground Flour?
There is a big difference between stone-ground flour and flour obtained from industrial cylinder mills. Stone ground flour keeps all the beneficial properties of the grain and nutrients intact. But it’s not just a matter of benefits. The presence of these properties can influence even the taste and aroma of the flour itself and give different strength and richness, even from an organoleptic point of view, to the finished product that uses this ingredient.
Why Does Stone Ground Flour Maintain These Characteristics?
The secret is all in the speed, or rather, in the slowness. The stone grinder has a much slower grinding speed than the roller mill. That is, the discs that crush the wheat grains spin at a speed that manages to keep the temperature of the flour constant during the milling process. This prevents the flour from overheating and losing, with the increase in temperature, precisely those beneficial properties we were talking about.
Speed… Heat… How Do You Explain It?
The same principle underlies rubbing your hands in winter when it’s cold. The faster you rub your hands together, the more heat is generated… If you imagine two stone discs instead of hands, here are the millstones. And if you put the wheat grains in the middle, here is the milling. The faster you rub the millstones or hands, if you prefer, the higher the temperature. The higher the temperature, the more nutritional properties of the grain are lost in the process.
The Slowness Of Processing: The Secret Of Nutritional Qualities
Stone ground flour has different characteristics compared to modern flour. During this type of grinding, which takes place by crushing, the deep layers of the grain are not discarded but opened up and impregnated the flour with wheat germ oil: the most precious parts of the grain are preserved and nourish that whole and authentic bread of the past, obtaining darker flours tending towards beige, never as white as the 0 or 00.
Taste and aroma are more intense, closer to the flavor of the harvested grain, to tradition, to the land. An aroma that can be felt tasted and shows its character. Precisely because of its property of maintaining the nutrients and authenticity of the cereal, this method is by far the most used for milling ancient grains and grains from organic farming.
Sift The Flour As Per Tradition: Sifting
Once ground, the flour is subjected to a process called sifting, i.e. it is sieved gradually through sieves with different meshes, called a burrito. Based on our needs, we will change the order of the sieves from which we can obtain type 1, 2 and integrals… the real ones!
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