My take on Villa's 100% whole wheat.

[David Esq.]

You can't make white flour at home. Not unless you invest a lot of time and lot more money. It'll be far cheaper to buy it at the store.  But you can certainly remove some of the bran with a sieve or series of sieves.  You can than use the leavings to feed your starter or as a replacement for corn meal on the peel.

[misterschu]

David, not sure I understand why white flour couldn't be made at home. My understanding was that it is simply the bran and germ removed. The bran certainly seems to be more coarse than the endosperm once milled.

Regardless, what size sieve or range of sizes would I need to catch the bran?

Thanks

[David Esq.]

David, not sure I understand why white flour couldn't be made at home. My understanding was that it is simply the bran and germ removed. The bran certainly seems to be more coarse than the endosperm once milled.

Regardless, what size sieve or range of sizes would I need to catch the bran?

Thanks

Check out some of the posts HERE.  I believe you will find the answers to your sieve questions as well as answers and questions you may  not have realized you had. 

Also, click on the White Flour Project links here, and see what Proth5 has done to get white flour at home.

[misterschu]

Thanks for the links, lots of good information.

[vtsteve]

Commercial roller mills enable the miller to strip layers off the wheat berry; once the outer layers are removed, milling white flour from the center endosperm is relatively easy. Most home mills use stones or burrs to crush the berries, or a high-speed/high-impact chamber to 'explode' them - that makes it much more difficult to separate the non-white components out of the flour.

That said, I picked up a #50 classifier sieve so I can make fake high-extraction flour from commercial stone-ground whole wheat, in a pinch.

[David Esq.]

You could also just add white flour to whole wheat to get your fake high extraction flour, no? 

[vtsteve]

In a pinch, but that's sort of like making 'milk' by watering down cream... it might look close, but the ratios aren't the same. I do make 'T65' by adding first clear to KA A/P, though. The extra ash makes a real difference in baguette & pain au levain.