Extraction

Extraction refers to the amount of flour milled from a given amount of grain. It is expressed as a percentage of the total amount of grain. For example, whole wheat flour is said to be 100% extraction because if you start with 100 pounds of grain, you end up with 100 pounds of whole wheat flour. As a second example, if a grade of flour is described as 60% extraction, this means it would take 100 kg whole grain to produce 60 kg of this grade of flour. The remaining 40% is bran, germ, shorts, and darker, lower grades of flour. Patent flour is a low-extraction flour, while straight flour is a high-extraction flour.