Grinding

The principle machines in the mill are the following:

Breakers: These are ribbed cylinders that run against each other at slightly different speeds. Their task is to break the grain of wheat open and rub the flour off the bran.

Flour rollers: These are smooth rollers that also run against each other at slightly different speeds. The flour rollers convert the coarse pieces of flour (= semolina) made by the breakers into fine flour.

Plan sifters: These are large boxes filled with 22 sieves one above the other. Their goal is to classify the meal products that come from the cylinders according to size and subsequently send these separated products to the right machines.

Polishing machine: Polishing machines are an addition to the plan sifters. They also contain sieves, but on top of the sieves there is a suction facility. A plan sifter can only separate the products according to their size; but a polishing machine can also separate the products according to their relative density. Brans are considerably lighter than coarse flour. Through the right adjustment of the suction one can also ensure that the bran is sucked upward so that only the heavy flour falls downward through the sifting. Thus the coarse flour or semolina flour is separated from the bran before the semolina is ground finely on the flour rollers.

Bran brushes: these are machines that brush the bran further.

After the grinding one obtains as finished products, based on starting out with 100 kg of wheat:

The quantity of flour that one obtains from 100 kg of wheat is called the degree of extraction of the flour.

The production process is not yet complete after grinding. First the flour is matured for several days  in stock silos. At Dossche Mills & Bakery bvb., we have a storage capacity for this purpose of over 9,000 tons of flour distributed over a large number of flour silos.