How to Clean a Flour Sifter (Helpful Guide)

Flour sifters are very much essential tools for your kitchen. They help you to make perfect recipes by straining your flours. Through filtering, it separates lumps of the flours and turns them lighter.

So you need it almost for regular use. However, while using a flour sifter for a long time, the holes get stuck with flour. Here the urgency comes to learn how to clean a flour sifter.

What is Flour Sifter?

A flour sifter is one type of strainer for filtering flours. It strains flours to eliminate essential molecules from the unnecessary ones. It is made of metal or plastic.

There is fine mesh attached with the metal sifter. The mesh typically possesses a net screen of double layers. There is a handle by which you can shake the sifter to filter your flours. It makes your flour fluffy as well as light in weight after straining.

Not only flour sifting, but you can also use it to strain other powder-like things, for example, coco-powder, chilli powder, turmeric powder and many more.

After pouring the flour into the sifter, it becomes strained with the first layer at the beginning. Then while shaking the handle, the flour gets strained by the second layer.

Besides filtering, you can also use your sifter to mix up two or more ingredients by pouring and straining through it. A flour sifter is very simple in structure, handy and easy to use as well.

Why Is Cleaning Necessary?

The flour sifter that you are using break the flour particles down and separate from unnecessary parts.

If you do not clean it, there is a possible chance of blocking the holes of the sifter with flour molecules. Whenever you sift your flours, there might be moistures of many things like egg, water, oil and other things. So the moistures come and attach with the strainers of the sifter.

As a result, the sifter gets rusted with gunk flours. A sifter also incorporates different ingredients while sifting. Again, perfect baking needs sifted flours. So cleaning a sifter is very much important.

If you use a plastic sifter, you can shake it off to leave out all the leftover from it. However, metal and other sifters are unable to reuse without cleaning.

Once you have cleaned up, there is no chance of getting it rusted. Also, you can be sure of not being your food attacked with bacteria.

You need it most while you are preparing any dish for baking. It helps to remove unnecessary elements from the flour and give it more volume.

How to Clean a Flour Sifter

A flour sifter is an essential thing almost for regular use to make the flour perfect for baking. That is why you need to clean your sifter after using it.

Otherwise, you cannot use it for a long time. There are several ways through which you can clean it up.

Here go some tips and tricks on how to properly clean a flour sifter and get a new-like one. You can follow any of them which you like.

Method 1: How to wash a shifter in the dishwasher

In order to get your dish perfectly blended or baked, a flour sifter is a must for your kitchen then. So, it would help if you learned how to clean it properly. Follow the below steps to clean your shifter.

Step 1: Soak it into soapy water or dishwasher

In case of cleaning a flour sifter, soapy water is very much effective. It helps to remove slack fragments from your flour sifter. Follow the below rules to to clean your flour sifter.

The first thing that you have to do is to use a bit of hot water because hot water makes the gunk off the sifter break down quickly.
For best result, you must soak your sifter in the hot soapy water for a minimum of 15 minutes.
If your sifter has not been cleaned for a long time, you have to soak it longer. But be careful about the plastic portion of your sifter if there is any. The reason is you are using hot water which might melt the plastic down.
So make sure that you have covered up the plastic part or carefully using the hot water on it. It would be wise to completely liquidate the area of your sifter that you have decided to clean.
There is another option for you to get your flour sifter cleaned faster. That is, you can mix up a little amount of distilled white vinegar with the soapy water.
As a result, the acidic reaction of the vinegar will help the flour fragments release from the sifter very swiftly.

Step 2: Rinse It Properly

As you have soaked your sifter for a long time now, you must rinse it. To rinse the soapy water, you can use your regular dishwasher.

However, you have to rinse and clean the sifter separately from other vessels. If you rinse it with other vessels, there is every chance of sticking up the food particles with its mesh.

You can scour it using your hands or use some spongy things to clean it. Although it will take time a bit, your sifter will be cleaned up properly.
You can even add some dishwashing soap while cleaning to make it cleaned more accurately. This is optional though.
In the case of rinsing, you have many other options except using sponge or hands. You can use your old toothbrushes to clean up the sifter. However, you must sterilize your brush with hydrogen peroxide or boiled water before using.
A coarse brush can be used because it can even remove dust from the small holes.
Another way is to use toothpicks. Just poke the sifter with some toothpicks until they take away all the stuck dust from it.

Once you have rinsed up your flour sifter using these tricks, it will become as new as the time you bought it.

Step 3: Drying

Drying becomes very crucial in case of using a flour sifter made of metal. If you leave your metal sifter without drying, it has a chance to be rusted. For this reason, you must dry it properly before you store it.

You can use towels to make it dry or leave it in the air to dry naturally.
Not only the metal sifter but the plastic sifter should also be dried adequately because the plastic may have bacteria attack if you leave it wet.
Moreover, when you are in a hurry to use the sifter just after cleaning, you must dry it. Otherwise, flour particles will again stick with the sifter because of the water drops. As a result, all your hard working for cleaning the sifter will go in vain.
The best way to make it dry is to put the sifter into the oven. The oven will help your sifter make completely dry and shiny.

Method 2: Use Vacuum Cleaner

It has already been mentioned that you can use a dishwasher to clean up your flour sifter. It is recommended for a plastic flour sifter because plastic is easy to wash, using a dishwasher.

You can even use your vacuum cleaner to clean it. Before using, you must ensure that your vacuum cleaner has no dust.

Just attach the hose of the sifter carrying bristles to the vacuum cleaner and make it start. It will vacuum all the stuck flours from the sifter.

Warning

Never use a rusted flour sifter without cleaning. It can make your food infected with bacteria and unhealthy for you.
Try to use a clean sifter every time. Otherwise, you can buy a plastic sifter so that you can use it just by shaking off.

FAQ:

How do you disassemble a flour sifter?

Ans: There are several options to disassemble or clean flour from the shifter. You can use soapy water or simply water, or you can do it by shaking the shifter. If the flour hardened, then it is better to use soapy water or detergent along with a brush to clean it.

How to remove rust from flour sifter?

Ans: You can remove rust either using the dishwasher boiled water for the metal shifter. On the other hand, you can simply shake the shifter (in case of plastic flour shifter). However, you can also use a vacuum cleaner to clean dust from it.

Conclusion

Now you know how to clean a flour sifter. You have all the tricks and tips for cleaning up your flour sifter properly.

However, traditional techniques sometimes do not work that much. In that case, you can follow these instructions. Thus, you might even get it washed like a brand new one.