The 10 Best Flour Sifters

Flour is the foundational ingredient of countless foods, including some of the most basic and beloved things we eat, from loaves of bread to birthday cakes to pastries to sweet and savory pies and beyond. The kitchen without a ready supply of flour on hand is never truly complete, and the long, stable shelf-life of this ancient staple paired with its low price make such an omission a flagrant violation in the eyes of any serious chef.

However, merely having flour on hand is not always enough; you also need to know what to do with it, and you need to be ready to properly measure, handle, and store flour, as well. We'll discuss flour storage (and how to know if it is safe for use) in detail later. For now, assuming you have a decent array of measuring cups and a fine set of measuring spoons, it's on the often-overlooked flour sifter that we'll focus. Before we talk about how to choose the right unit for your kitchen, let's first deal with the common questions of when, why, and how do you use a flour sifter, anyway?

Sifted flour is, as the name suggests, passed through a sifting mechanism that helps to remove all the clumps and chunks that are commonly found in flour, especially if it is older or has been exposed to moisture. Thoroughly sifted flour is light and airy and can be more easily mixed into doughs and batters. The process removes the likelihood of powdery lumps turning up in a loaf of bread or of a cake collapsing due to an uneven interior structure.

Flour sifters are excellent tools for the baker, therefore, and are especially useful not only for processing flour but also for blending in other dry ingredients, such as the salt, garlic powder, or other herbs and spices mixed into a bread recipe, or the sugar, cocoa, or cinnamon used in cookies, pastries, and more. Sifting flour is also quite important when a new bag of flour is being opened or when you are using flour that has been sitting in storage for some time. This is true both to help aerate the product, and to help remove any unwanted items lurking within, such as insects or bits of other foodstuffs from a past cooking session.

Now, as for the flour sifter that is right for you, that depends on how frequently you will use the device and how much flour you are likely to process at a time, as well as on which type of operating mechanism you prefer. For indeed even the finest flour sifters designed for standard household use are pleasantly low-priced, so your budget is hardly a concern. Some sifters use grip-operated levers to shift their grates as they sift flour, and these options allow for precise control of the volume passed through. However their use might be uncomfortable for those with compromised grip strength such as can be caused by age, injury, or medical condition.

Rotary-style flour sifters are a good choice for the cook who needs to distribute large amounts of the foodstuff at a time, and they are easy to operate continuously. They are, however, slightly harder to control with precision. Finally the simplest design of sifter might be the best for some chefs: many sifters resemble nothing more than a broad, shallow bowl with a fine mesh at the bottom. They are operated by being tapped or shaken from side to side, and are ideal for scattering flour over a large area at once, such as the cook might need for breading cutlets of meat or dusting a cake or loaf of bread with flour that will enhance the character of the crust.