Well, howdy there! Today, we’re gonna yak about somethin’ called a “mesh flour sifter.” Don’t you go gettin’ all highfalutin on me, it ain’t as fancy as it sounds. It’s just a thingamajig for makin’ your flour all nice and fluffy, ya hear?
Now, I ain’t no baker, not really. But even I know you can’t just dump flour straight from the bag into your cake batter. It gets all clumpy and lumpy, and then your cake turns out hard as a rock. Nobody wants a rock cake, right? So, that’s where this here mesh flour sifter comes in.
What exactly is a mesh flour sifter, anyways?
Like I said, it ain’t rocket science. Imagine a cup with a screen on the bottom, like a window screen but finer. That’s pretty much it. You dump your flour in, shake it around, and the fine flour falls through, leavin’ all the nasty clumps and bits behind. Some got a handle you crank, some you just shake. Easy peasy.
- Types of Mesh Flour Sifters: Some are plain and simple. Some are all shiny and stainless steel looking. And some, believe it or not, run on batteries! Heard tell of one called “HYCBTC Battery Operated Flour Sifter”, sounds plumb crazy to me, but I reckon it works just fine for them city folks. Then there are these ChefGiant ones, Cook N Home, OXO Good Grips, and Norpro kinds. Too many fancy names if you ask me.
- Why you need one: Keeps the bugs and such out, makes your cakes and biscuits lighter than a feather, and gets rid of those pesky lumps. Nothin’ worse than biting into a biscuit and hittin’ a hard chunk of flour.
- How to use it: Look here, it ain’t hard. You just dump the flour in the sifter, hold it over your bowl, and shake it like you’re shooing flies off a watermelon. Or crank the handle if it’s one of them fancy crankin’ kinds. Keep shakin’ ’til all the fine flour is in the bowl and you’re left with the clumpy stuff in the sifter. Throw that clumpy stuff away, or give it to the chickens, they ain’t picky. Some sifters, like the Norpro one, even got measurements on ’em so you know how much flour you’re usin’.
Now, let’s talk about the different kinds.
Some of them sifters are right small, holdin’ maybe two or three cups of flour. That’s fine if you’re just makin’ a little somethin’. But if you’re bakin’ for a whole passel of folks, you’re gonna want a bigger one, like an 8-cup one. That Cook N Home one, they say it holds a whole eight cups! That’s a lot of flour, enough to make a cake big enough to feed the whole darn county. Them OXO ones, they say they got a good handle, ergonomic they call it. Means it’s comfy to hold, I guess. And the Norpro one, that’s for folks who like to measure things just so. It’s got them little lines and numbers so you know exactly how much flour you got.
And then there are them battery-operated ones. I still can’t quite wrap my head around that. A sifter that needs batteries? What will they think of next? But I hear tell they work real good, especially if you’re usin’ somethin’ like almond flour or powdered sugar, stuff that’s real fine and tends to clump up somethin’ fierce. They even got a stainless steel sieve, somethin’ like 20 mesh, whatever that means. Sounds mighty fancy, though.
So, which one should you get?
Well, that depends on what you need it for and how much money you wanna spend. If you’re just bakin’ a cake or two every now and then, a simple little hand-cranked or shake sifter will do just fine. But if you’re bakin’ all the time, or if you’re bakin’ for a crowd, you might want to invest in a bigger, fancier one. And if you’re bakin’ with them fancy flours like almond flour, maybe that battery-operated one is the way to go. Honestly though, any sifter is better than no sifter at all. Believe me, your cakes and biscuits will thank you.
In all honesty, a good flour sifter is a handy thing to have in the kitchen, even if you ain’t no fancy baker. It’s a simple tool, but it makes a big difference in how your baked goods turn out. So go on and get yourself one. You won’t regret it.
And one more thing. Don’t go spendin’ a fortune on one. A simple one will do the job just fine. You ain’t gotta have all the bells and whistles to make a good cake. Just some flour, some sugar, a little bit of elbow grease, and a good flour sifter. That’s all you need.
