Impact milling vs friction milling

I came across a company that offers "unifine" milled flours a while back, and they seemed to be quite proud of that.  So I decided to get my nerd on and start researching.  Looks like it boils down to a different mill design where, instead of grains being crushed or ground (which produces heat, which can then alter the oils, which can then alter the flavor of the bake), the grains are instead impelled at high speed and shattered into a bajillion little bits against ceramic targets, and all the above ill effects are neatly sidestepped.

Okay...sounds cool, but does it really matter?  I've tried baking with both (this was around the start of my sourdough kick a year and a half ago, so haven't really experimented beyond that), and I haven't noticed a difference.  The texture of the unifine flour itself is perhaps a bit more consistently fine, but in the end the breads seem to turn out about the same.  I've been using 100% whole grain wheat (red).

So my question here is:  Has anyone else tried this and noticed a difference worth caring about?  Thanks!

I haven't ever heard of this, but I would be interested to try it b/c I generally like the texture of bread from fine-ground flours.

Hi Brian, I actually came on this forum today to ask about the same topic. My daughter is the one who bakes the most over the last year but I decided to make banana bread today and I noticed that my whole wheat(unifine) pastry flour from Azure Standard is not very fine. I had noticed my daughter's baked goods were more textured lately but had just assumed she was using a more robust whole wheat flour from our pantry. The pastry flour texture almost makes me feel like there is a roughly ground oat meal, that type of texture. You can see little flakes in the flour. It tastes fine and I don't mind texture in my bread and muffins but I wasn't sure if this is standard for unifine flour. (My bread flour from the same brand is the same.) Pastry flour is supposed to be extremely fine. I buy whole wheat bread and pastry flour from Bob's Red Mill and also King Arthur and their flours are so fine it's not even close to the texture of this unifine flour. So I'm surprised that you wrote that unifine is supposed to be extra fine... 🤷 Now I don't know what I should expect.

We had gotten ours from Azure Standard as well.  It was pretty fluffy stuff (didn't notice any flakes).  My only real point of comparison is the store-bought stuff; it's not bad, but I can definitely see larger pieces of bran (and can easily sift it out to get an 85/15 split).  I'm also not really sure what to expect beyond marketing claims, unfortunately.

Milling with a grain mill sure beats hand gristmill.
Likewise threshing an acre of wheat can be done in minutes compared to 7-10 days of beating with sticks depending on how many people are beating.