1,579 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 77 videos

This site uses only a few technical cookies necessary for its operation. By continuing to browse, you accept their use.
To find out more...

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it.
To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe.

It's often advice, but is it really useful?

11 K 3/5 (1 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Flours Powders Sieves Pellets Rebulet Lumps

Last modified on: September 3^rd 2025

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

The importance of sieving

This problem arises with all fine powders, as I was saying, but we're going to continue this post by focusing on flour.

Sifting

The purpose of sifting is simply to ensure that you add a fine flour powder to your recipe, which will incorporate well with the other ingredients, without making lumps.
Unfortunately, flour always ends up clumping together, mainly due to humidity, and forms little balls, often invisible because they're drowned in the mass.
It's not a question of the product itself - even when agglomerated into pellets, it's still good flour. It's more a question of texture: pellets don't mix as well as fine powder, and they can cause lumps, or remain in a ball in your dough.
What's more, they are rarely visible: you pour flour into your preparation, everything seems normal, you have a nice fine powder, but the pellets may be there.

The easiest way to get rid of them is to sift the flour.

Look at the photo of T55 flour, before sifting...

And after.

Once there are only pellets left in the bottom of your sieve, simply press down to reduce them to powder, sieve again, and continue your recipe undisturbed.

Is this really necessary?

You might think, well, it's flour, so it's still mostly fine powder, and I put it all in a mixer or whisk it carefully, so there's no need to sift.
Of course, in absolute terms, this is true, but it's still better to sift, because your dough will mix faster and better, and it's also an opportunity to eliminate any squatter insects that might be present in the flour, especially in organic flour.

Do I have to sift everything?

A professional pastry chef would certainly say yes, but I think that if you limit yourself to the flours and powdered sugar, you'll already be in very good shape for the rest of your recipe.

Special mention should be made of the chestnut flour and powdered sugar (see photo), which clump together very, very easily, as you'll soon see when you open the packet or box.

To sum up: it's best to sift all the fine powders that go into your recipe, as this is always better for the texture of the mixture you're about to make, and to avoid lumps.
And it's not Édith who will contradict me ;-)

Lasts posts

Cut twice as fast

When you need to cut something long into small pieces, for example chopped chives or the stem of a spring onion, there's a simple gesture that doubles your cutting speed. Let's see how.
May 21^th 20261,272

The other use for bowl scraper

Your kitchen or bakery utensils may include a horn (left) or a pastry cutter (right). These practical utensils are normally used to scoop the contents of a bowl or salad bowl - the horn - or to cut dough - the pastry cutter. But they also have another, very practical use - let's see what it is.
May 9^th 20261,432

The strange foam of potatoes in milk

As you may have already noticed, when you cook potatoes in milk, especially in small pieces (slices or cubes) for a gratin for example, a surprisingly abundant white foam forms on the surface. Where does it come from?
April 26^th 20261,695

A little leftover butter

Very often when you're making a cake, your recipe will tell you to melt some butter and mix it into the batter - a classic for cookies, cakes, moelleux and the like. And every time you do this, you'll have to butter the baking tin to prevent the dough from sticking during baking. Naturally,...
April 16^th 20261,5595

A tablet holder

Perhaps you too cook by consulting your recipe on a tablet or phone, and putting it down on your worktop? It's practical, but not the best solution. Here's a look at how you can make an inexpensive, almost universal stand.
March 14^th 20262,2245

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Baking cakes

Where we see that to put a cake in the oven, once the dough is finished and in its mould, there is no hurry and that the cold is your friend.
June 28^th 201947 K4.1

The "pith" of the cauliflower

When using cauliflower in a recipe, there is a lot of preparation work at the beginning: removing the leaves, taking the tops or florets, etc. It's a bit tedious, but in the end you're left with the best of the cauliflower, ready to be used in your recipe.
February 5^th 202215 K4.9

Sorrel and its cooking

Do you like sorrel? This delicious plant with its beautiful bright green leaves, whose subtle acidity goes very well with many other things, including in particular cream, to form with salmon the emblematic dish of the 70's, "Salmon with sorrel" on which was built the beginning of the fame of the...
March 19^th 202213 K5

Don't throw away your pizza crusts

You've probably already noticed that at the end of a pizza meal, at least half of the participants have left the crusts in the boxes or on the plates that many don't eat. Naturally, one would tend to put them "to the birds", or worse, to throw them away, and it's a shame because they are in fact...
April 22^th 202311 K4.9

Fruits which can ruin your jelly

There are many ways of making a fruit mousse, but one of the simplest is to prepare a fruit jelly (basically a fresh fruit coulis with gelatine) and then mix this jelly before it sets completely with whipped cream. The result is perfect for filling a charlotte, for example. But do beware;...
March 6^th 201380 K4.0