Sifting is, I hate to tell you, actaully important. It separates and aerates the flour, making it easier to mix with a liquid.

It *is* a PITA, I’ll grant you that.

Er. Actually. I can sift, but I can’t spell.

Oh, Katherine… You are just a cog in the great world conspiracy that is Sifting. You are one of the many, many people who are paying for a brand new Mercedes for Bitsy Feucht, the sixteen year old great-granddaughter of Darryl Feucht (inventor of the sifter, 1902). For shame, Katherine. FOR SHAME.

But Sage, you don’t have to own a fancy sifter to sift — just something with mesh fine enough to do the job, which is probably what everyone did before the fancy-dancy sifting machine came along.

So I can continue to sift without losing sleep over giving my sifter money to The Man. Or his granddaughter.

:-)

S’True - I use a plain ol’ sieve to sieve (sift) my flour; while the 5- and 10- pound bags of flour we get don’t compact down quite so much as our foremothers’ 500-pound barrels of the stuff (which REALLY needed aerating), it still makes a difference, especially if you get into the simple chemistry* of baking.

* for certain values of simple, or of chemistry for that matter, viz. http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20080213
(ahem.)