The principle behind the traditional stone mill? Always the same: crush the grain.
The traditional stone mill
Whether the mill was powered by man, water or animals, the seeds were crushed to produce flour. The grain was crushed by the action of the two millstones grinding against each other.
Over the course of history, the greatest improvements have made the action of the flying millstone easier. This allows it to turn more easily and quickly to grind the grain.
Innovations have always focused on optimising force:
- so that it is continuous
- smooth
They also focused on sifting to obtain a flour
- finer
- avoiding as many re-passes as possible
In fact, some of the milling waste was passed between the millstones.
The principle of the stone mill is therefore to crush the grain, sieve it, and iron the milling waste until an extraction rate of around 80% is achieved.
The Astrié brothers, a major innovation!
An innovation for wheat
The Astrié brothers came up with an invention that, for once, had nothing to do with the force exerted on the millstones or the sieving process, but with the wheat itself.
So it was no longer the millstone that crushed the wheat, but the wheat that pushed the flying millstone upwards.
The millstone rests on a spring, and is pressed upwards. In this way, it is forced apart so that it unrolls the grain of wheat.
As the flying grindstone rests on the spring, it does not touch the standing grindstone.
How will it then unwind the grain? The spring is pressed down to adjust and control this pressure. This is called micrometric adjustment of the distance between the wheels.
An innovation on the system that becomes… oscillating
At the same time, this oscillating system means that you don’t have to manage the milling process. The result is a wheat grain that is completely unrolled.
All the parts of the grain (with the exception of the husk) are finely mixed together. And we don’t have to do any re-milling, since we achieve an extraction rate of 80% in a single pass.
Economically, the miller has no ironing to do. He can therefore carry out other tasks (such as looking after another mill) while still having exceptional flour.
A local flour… which is no longer altered
With a traditional stone-ground flour mill, as with an Astrié mill (which is also a stone-ground mill!), the flour will be a local flour.
This is because a traditional stone mill reproduces the whole grain of the wheat.
With a stone mill, the work will be laborious and the resulting flour will be altered by ironing and oxidation between the millstones.
On the other hand, with an Astrié mill, the fact that everything is done in a single pass means that the flour includes all the nutritional content of the grain without any alteration.
The system is therefore simple, intuitive, efficient and delivers exceptional results.
We could combine it with cold pressing, so there’s no need to do anything afterwards.
Flour from an Astrié Mill is fine, light, fresh and soft. It is also much easier to digest, which is exactly what we are looking for. Why is flour from an Astrié Mill easier to digest? Read on!
To find out more
Have you been looking for an Astrié mill but need more information? Read on for our article ‘8 valuable tips before buying an Astrié Mill’.
