My father is a flour miller. He wants to know how he can make wheat, or flour more specifically, whiter during the milling process. Is there anything that can be done before in preparation or after the process?
Flour – How to Make Flour More White When Under Process In Flour Mill
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Flour types are quite different in various countries, but yes, all flours are basically made from crushing grains (wheat in this case).
A grain mainly consists of three parts:
Source: http://www.californiawheat.org/industry/diagram-of-wheat-kernel/
The bran.
The outer layer of the grain.The endosperm.
The white inner part that we tend to associate with flour.The germ.
The sprouting section. Often removed in flours for longer shelf life.
So when milling grains, the parts of the grain are separated, for whiter flour (that's the lower numbered types, the number actually giving the mineral content and indirectly indicating the fiber content.), the bran and germ are mostly removed, "brown" and "black" flour (middle to high number range) increasing amounts of the bran are kept,resulting in a higher fiber content.
Whole grain is - as the name implies - made from the whole kernel (but quite close to "black" / 1600).
As you noted, the "numbers" (= mineral content) typically sold in stores are not consistent in European countries, but the pattern is always the same. (In France, the numbers seem different, but are basically the numbers you know divided by 10.) If your recipe calls for a specfic "number", you can "mix" "lower numbered" and "higher numbered" flours to get the desired strength.
For simplicity the lighter types are sometimes labeled according to their use: Cake flour / all purpose flour / bread flour (-> increasing "numbers").
The US has a slightly different system, here flours are characterized by their protein content and labeled according to use. if I remember correctly there was some kind of "substitute chart" here, but I can't find it at the moment.
It sounds like you are doing it wrong! :) Grind spices in a spice grinder first (a rotary coffee grinder works fine for that). See How do you finely grind coriander seeds?
Garlic, ginger, fresh herbs and coconut are fine in a small bowl of a food processor, but they need some time and a few restarts after cleaning the sides of the bowl with a spatula. After processing the spices and other dry things in the rotary grinder, you can add the spices to the moist things after they have been processed. The food processor will be fine to mix the dry and moist parts, after they have been ground/processed separately.
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Best Answer
Flour will whiten over time when stored. It generally takes several months to get a whiter color. Most flour manufacturers wish to speed this process up and so they actually bleach the flour using cholrine or benzoyl peroxide. This bleaching process also removes nutrietns which is why flour in the U.S. that has been bleached must also be "fortified" by having nutrients added back in.
There isn't much you can do beforehand. After milling, you can either bleach for immediate affect or store and allow it to whiten naturally. Keep in mind that different flours are usually bleached with different chemicals depending on what you plan to do with the flour.
I'll leave it to you to decide if it's worth the time and nutritional value to mix chemicals in to your flour for what is purely a cosmetic benefit.