Without Worrying About Worms: Which Flour Sifter Should I Buy?

I want to start baking challah at home, and for that I need a sifter. How can I know which sifter is the most kosher?

First, I will preface with what is already known and written, that today the flour used for baking bread and its products passes through a long and winding pipe system and is packaged in sealed bags, a route that provides a fertile ground for growing various types of worms. It is therefore mandatory to sort and clean the wheat, perform excellent sifting, and maintain strict hygiene conditions during the packaging, storage, and marketing of flour (Book of Kashrut, Chapter 7).

A. You should know that when flour is stored in a store or at home in a warm place, it can already become infested or receive insects within 3 days, therefore it should be stored in a cool, dry place and must be sifted before use.

B. Flour sifting must be done with a sifter that ensures that worms, even small ones, will not pass through it, which is called a "silk sifter". The sifter itself must be thoroughly cleaned after use and must be checked and cleaned before using it again. Some have written that you can store the sifter after using it in the freezer inside a plastic bag without cleaning it.

C. Flour that requires sifting must have all of it checked by sifting according to the law, and one should not be satisfied with sample testing, even if several samples were taken from the entire quantity and found completely clean. Indeed, when flour is well sifted, even if part of it is found to be infested, the rest that has been sifted is permitted for consumption.

D. A sifter called '40 mesh' has 40 holes per inch. However, eggs pass through this sifter, so it does not meet kosher standards. But a sifter with 70-80 holes per inch also stops the eggs, and possibly even moth larvae (which appear in flour as spider webs), so this sifter is considered stringently kosher.

E.The law regarding semolina: By strict law, one should sort it very carefully to ensure there are no insects or worms. However, Rabbi Moshe Vaya, the expert in the field, instructs to be stringent and sift the semolina through a sugar powder dispenser sieve so that the semolina particles pass through with difficulty. What remains in the sieve must be checked for worms or insects, and then it is good to place the semolina on white paper under the sun. After about ten minutes, pull the white paper in a way that leaves the semolina in the tray below or falls into a container, and check the white paper for small worms and the like. If infestation is found at any stage of the inspection, do not use the semolina.

F. Whole wheat flour needs sifting with a silk sifter like regular flour, and then the bran that remains in the sifter needs to be carefully sorted to ensure there are no insects or worms and needs to be sorted very carefully, as it is particularly susceptible to insect infestation. If the bran is found to be infested, it should not be used, and the white flour that has been sifted is permitted. If the bran is found to be clean, since it has been separated from the flour by sifting, it is not included in the measurement for separating challah.

G. Since it is very difficult to sort the semolina, as the small worms that die curl up like a ball and look like a grain of semolina, and it is also very difficult to sort the bran in whole wheat flour, pious individuals concerned with Hashem's word buy frozen semolina and whole wheat flour from the time of grinding, or in vacuum packaging from the time of grinding without freezing with Badatz certification, and thus it does not require sifting as it is presumed to be clean of worms.

Rabbi Shai Amar is a rabbi in the Halachic department of Hidabroot

Questions for the rabbi: 054-8448909