wholemeal or whole grain

[Rosendula]

I always thought that wholemeal flour was whole grain flour milled finer, but because I've had a nagging doubt in the back of my mind I decided to look it up. Now I'm really confused. Some people seem to believe the same as what I have been believing, others say wholemeal is white flour with some of the bran chucked back in. Does anyone know the true answer to this? Is it different in different parts of the world (hence the different opinions on the web)?

[The Riff-Raff Element]

I always thought that wholemeal flour was whole grain flour milled finer, but because I've had a nagging doubt in the back of my mind I decided to look it up. Now I'm really confused. Some people seem to believe the same as what I have been believing, others say wholemeal is white flour with some of the bran chucked back in. Does anyone know the true answer to this? Is it different in different parts of the world (hence the different opinions on the web)?

Certainly in France wholemeal ("complête") can white wheat flour with fibre (including fibre from other plants like field beans) added back in, but "wholegrain" is just that - flour made from grain and nothing else.

No idea about elsewhere though.

[MandyWB]

We also struggled with this for a while and then decided to start to mill our own grain. If you scroll down a little on the following link it gives some interesting info about all commercially milled flour and the benefits of milling your own.

http://www.browfarmwheatproducts.co.uk/ ... t.htm#info

Hope this helps

[grahamhobbs]

Wholemeal in the UK means the wholegrain, ie. 100% of the wheat. Wholewheat is usually 85% extraction and White 70 - 75%.

In the States they call wholemeal, wholewheat, which maybe the source of your confusion.

[Millymollymandy]

Never heard of whole grain but what about brown flour vs. wholemeal which I see in England? Both have bits left in the sieve when you sieve them, but brown has less.

In France you have one solitary brand which makes (non bread) 'complete' which is just brown flour which if you sieve just goes straight thru with no 'bits' in it. In my opinion wholeMEAL flour should have lots of bits (bran) which don't go through a sieve. Thankfully I have found bread flour from Belgium which has this bran in it, and I add more bought from the health food shop!

[grahamhobbs]

Wholemeal is defined, brown flour can be anything - but basically white flour with stuff added back in, bran, colouring, whatever.

[spider8]

We also struggled with this for a while and then decided to start to mill our own grain. If you scroll down a little on the following link it gives some interesting info about all commercially milled flour and the benefits of milling your own.

http://www.browfarmwheatproducts.co.uk/ ... t.htm#info

Hope this helps

How are you getting on with milling your own grain MandyWB? It's something we'd like to do but don't know where to start .

[MandyWB]

We love it Spider8. We started with a hand grinder and felt very worthy not using electric but I make a batch of sourdough loaves once a week and it was taking over an hour and a half of hand grinding on bread baking days, in addition to the daily grind when I refreshed the starter. So we decided to splash out on an electric grinder and eased our concience by ordering a solar PV array (we'd been thinking about this for a while - it wasn't just for the ginder!). This has made it so much easier although the ginder was obviously named by someone with a sense of humour - its called 'silence'

The flour is fantastic the bread tastes lovely and the grain is easy to store so if you have the space it is feasible to get in your winter supply of grain and not have to worry about being snowed in etc.