grinding flour

[jared herbert]

I thought this would be a good place to post this question as I know the readers have a vast array of varied knowledge. I am looking for a small grinder, either electric or had powered to grind small batches of flour from wheat, corn etc. I have looked at a lot of them on ebay and read the reviews of different grinders on amazon and most of them are not well thought of at all, either break, dont work, dont grind fine enough, very slow, etc. I do have access to a grinder to grind corn meal but nothing that will make flour. Any suggestions or ideas from any one that has done this? thanks in advance Jared

[David Weaver]

I would do it in a vitamix, but it costs a mint to do that and it's not a large volume grinder. No clue where you're going to find a good flour mill that will grind flour fairly fine as even 100 years ago it was done in town at the mill and farmers traded raw wheat for flour (and traded an additional margin to pay for the wheat).

The reason I'd use a vitamix is because it will give you something to work other foods for the money (you can save a lot of marginal vegetables and fruits by blasting them into a smoothie - things that have texture issues because they're spoiling don't have any issues in a smoothie). And because if you get a refurb vitamix, they're guaranteed for 7 years, they honor their guarantee, the basic 5200 model machine (or whatever the type is now) has very little electronics on it and they're made in the states. A refurb with a dry grinder pitcher would be almost 600 bucks, though.

[Mark Patoka]

I was going to recommend the Vitamix also. We just bought one and it's touted as being used to make nut flour with the recommended dry blade. We haven't tried it for that yet but it's great at everything else it's advertised for. I remember my grandmother grinding her own whole wheat flour in some rather loud device so it may be possible to find something at an estate auction or antique store.

[Brian Elfert]

I've never done flour milling, but I bet you'll get the best performance from a used unit that was built in the USA before everything was cheapened up and shifted to Asian manufacturing.

[Jim Laumann]

My wife explored this issue this summer. We have a Vita-Mix - she ruled it out. We tryed a hand crank "flour" mill by Weston - bought it off Amazon. It works - grinds "flour" - kinda - sorta - but it's still pretty course. We have decided to use this machine to grind small batches of corn for our chickens.

Since that time, she has found an electric unit - the name escapes me, but she found one which works w/ wheat and other grains (she loves whole grain breads). The name escapes me - I will try to find that out and post a follow-up.

Jim

[David Weaver]

I've never done flour milling, but I bet you'll get the best performance from a used unit that was built in the USA before everything was cheapened up and shifted to Asian manufacturing.

That was my point above, though, it's never been commonly done in the home because it's too much work and it would involve rolling/crushing and screening/sifting.

I've never used a vitamix to do it because I don't have the dry blender cup, but there are videos of making a cup or two at a time on youtube in about a minute in a vitamix. The videos of the inexpensive flour mills are less convincing, and as much as I have seen a lot of old farm equipment (one-hole corn shellers, etc) designed for small use, I've never seen an old manual flour mill.

[Dennis Peacock]

The LOML and I bought this one years ago. http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com/country_living_mill.aspx?gclid=COqL-66Jq7oCFYg7MgodGDkADg
We have it still today. It works really well and we have not needed to replace the grinding plates in it yet. You can vary the grind and more. We are very pleased with the mill.

[Ryan Mooney]

Its hard to get a consistent grind in a vitamix.. .Possible but it takes quite a while to grind enough for a loaf of bread and the grind is inconsistent unless you do really small batches (I tried it in ours once just to see after some people had talked it up and .. meh.. not like a mill - don't get me wrong the vitamix is a great blender but its not a grain mill).

So there are basically two classes of mills to look at:

Burr mills. In this catagory I have the "Country Living" grain mill. Its near the higher end but I wouldn't go lower. A comparable mill is the Diamant, I don't have a direct comparison but chose the Country Living for some reasons I can't remember anymore as its been a number of years. Since then the "grainmaker" (grainmaker.com) has also come around; some people like it even better; it didn't exist when I bought (and they are domestically made if that matters to you). The Country Living works really well for corn and other large or gummy grains and is also my go-to for nuts/seeds when I'm doing large enough batches that the blender doesn't cut it. There are some powered burr mills (and both the country living and the diamant can be powered with say a belt drive but that isn't exactly what I'd call space efficient :D) but none of the small powered ones I've seen would I recommend at all (good ones may exist, just don't know of any) . The Country Living CAN be used to grind enough wheat to flour but you'll be a hungry man once you're done. My biggest complaint about the Country Living is that the stone width setting isn't very stable, I think I just need to add another nut to lock it in place but haven't bothered. For ease of grinding I usually grind in two passes a coarse and then a fine grind (going straight to fine might be ok if you're built like Paul Bunyan - I ain't). Double ground wheat is perfectly acceptable but not nearly as good as my go-to mill.
Impact Mills. There are two of these that I'm aware of on the market (at least at the smaller consumer scale); whispermill and the nutrimill. Functionally I'm unconvinced there is a significant difference between them. I can however highly recommend the nutrimill from a customer service standpoint (no experience with whispermill there might be as good don't know). The impact mills DO NOT work well with any gummy grains (oats it turns out meet this definition :o) or oily seeds. You CAN run corn through them but it sounds like they're coming apart so I don't like to do it and use the Country Living instead. For flour however they are heavenly; it makes the best finest nicest whole wheat flour you've ever used, close to the equivalent of store white flour. My customer service respect for the Nutrimill comes after we ran some oats through it (it now has a warning to NOT do that) and it gummed up and burned up the motor. We'd had the machine for ~4 years and figured "welp that's it" but no they CROSS SHIPPED us a brand new one - at their cost no questions asked! I only expect service like that from someplace like Lee valley :cool:. The downside to all of the impact mills is that they're loud. About vacuum cleaner loud.


If I could only have one mill in my kitchen I'd pick the Nutrimill hands down.

A few other notes on fresh ground grain:

Don't store fresh flour over about 2 weeks or it starts to go rancid (you have flour with all of the oils in place from the germ which is good health wise but not so good storage wise). Whole kernel wheat on the other hand seems to keep good for years (up to at least 4 is the longest we've had any left in my experience and it was still plumb good).
Its really GOOD and will ruin you for store bread and flour :D
If you haven't cooked with 100% whole wheat be aware that it hydrates slightly differently than white flour (slower and takes on more moisture). I mostly notice this with things like pancakes where the batter keeps getting thicker as you cook and you need to add a little more liquid as you go.
Try some other grains like rye (makes great pancakes), buckwheat (yeah I know, not a grain) and rice. I've made quite a bit of brown rice flower and have ~almost~ perfected the technique of one type of rice crackers. Kinda cool.
The flour coming out of an impact mill is "fluffy" and so measuring by volume it takes 25-30% more flour than store bag flour that's been compacted down (real bakers go by weight anyway :D)


Note: yes I have to many grain mills... I also have a corona mill (please don't bother unless you're grinding wet masa/nixtamalized corn - that's what they were made for and they SUCK at everything else). And a roller mill for brewing - also really only good for that :D

[ray hampton]

all is well and good BUT WHERE to buy the wheat or corn to grind into flour or meal

[ray hampton]

I use a food processor to make peanut butter before, could a processor also grind the wheat

[Joe Hillmann]

If you want build it yourself. I built something like this http://www.engr.psu.edu/mtah/projects/build_quern.htm

You can determine how fine the finished flour is by how many times you run it through and how heavy the top stone is. You can grind enough to make a loaf of bread in just a couple minutes.

When looking online search for quern rather than flour mill, you should be able to see several videos of them in action.

[Dennis Peacock]

http://www.samsclub.com/sams/augason-farms-hard-red-wheat-45-lb-pail/prod4940312.ip
45 pound pail of red wheat.

[Ryan Mooney]

all is well and good BUT WHERE to buy the wheat or corn to grind into flour or meal

Well I grew the corn.. :rolleyes: Turns out a fairly small patch of corn (15'x15') makes a fair bit of corn meal.

For wheat I go to one of a couple of bulk healthfood suppliers. If you can find a Seventh Day Adventist run healthfood store they often have bulk grains (and beans) and are usually reasonably priced. I also live close to Azuer Standard and can do will-call for $50 or more in bulk foods: https://www.azurestandard.com/drops/schedule Normally you need to order a batch of $500 or more per dropoff location (many parts of the country have buyers clubs setup for this). If you search for "bulk wheat berries" there are some other online places as well but I have no experience with any of them. If you're lucky you know a wheat farmer and he can just hard you a couple of 50lb bags from the back of the silo in exchange for a 12 pack :D

There are actually a number of different types of wheat, so be aware of what you're buying as well (and forgive me but I'm simplifying this a lot as well :D This will get you close anyway):

Hard White Wheat (spring) - This is roughly comparable to "all purpose" flour and is what I mostly use. With proper techniques you can make just about anything with this. I would recommend sticking with this type when you're starting until you feel a desire to experiment.
Hard Red Wheat (winter) - "bread flour" although that's kind of misleading or at least incomplete. Its a higher protein wheat so it arguably should work better for many breads. However it also has a higher bran content which tends to break up the gluten more and it benefits from some sifting. I've had the best luck coarse milling it, sifting the bran and then re-milling it.
Soft White Wheat (?) - this is the cake flour of whole wheat grains. It works good for cakes (hah) and things like soda bread of biscuits or pancakes but not so much for breads. I got a small bag once to try it and it was kind of interesting but generally don't bother.


Edit: Dennis's link for berries is a really decent price.

[Gordon Eyre]

As the baker in our family I grind all my own flour. For many years I used a stone grinder by the name of Magic Mill. The flour it produces is not super fine but I found that running it through twice made a good bread flour, especially if you use 1/3 white flour from the store and 2/3 wheat flour from the mill. I used hard red wheat berries but have switched to white wheat of late. After many years with the Magic amill I finally bought a Nutrimill and love it. It is fairly quiet and will turn out an excellent fine flour very quickly. There is little to no dust so doing the grinding in your house is not a problem. I bake five loaves at a time and everyone that tries my bread loves it. I recommend the Nutrimill highly.

As for blenders I would recommend Blendtec over the Vita Mix and I have had both. The motor on the Blendtec is more powerful and has a higher blade speed. Both are warranteed for 7 years so that is not a factor. I also like the blade design better on the Blendtec and also the jar. It will fit under the top cabinets on most kitchens while the Vita Mix will not. I currently own the Blendtec Designer series that came with two jars. Love it.

[Jim Laumann]

The grinder my wife got was from a web firm named Pleasant Hills Grain (.com I assume - Google it). THe machine was a Jupiter (she didn't give me a model #, etc).

Hope this helps

Jim

[David Weaver]

As the baker in our family I grind all my own flour. For many years I used a stone grinder by the name of Magic Mill. The flour it produces is not super fine but I found that running it through twice made a good bread flour, especially if you use 1/3 white flour from the store and 2/3 wheat flour from the mill. I used hard red wheat berries but have switched to white wheat of late. After many years with the Magic amill I finally bought a Nutrimill and love it. It is fairly quiet and will turn out an excellent fine flour very quickly. There is little to no dust so doing the grinding in your house is not a problem. I bake five loaves at a time and everyone that tries my bread loves it. I recommend the Nutrimill highly.

As for blenders I would recommend Blendtec over the Vita Mix and I have had both. The motor on the Blendtec is more powerful and has a higher blade speed. Both are warranteed for 7 years so that is not a factor. I also like the blade design better on the Blendtec and also the jar. It will fit under the top cabinets on most kitchens while the Vita Mix will not. I currently own the Blendtec Designer series that came with two jars. Love it.

Gordon - since you're using your mill setup to bake bread, can you comment on any pluses or minuses of the baking process vs. using bagged flour? e.g., is the flour more or less forgiving, does it rise predictably and have good spring, etc. The reviews are good enough for the mill that I might like to give it a try, and my wife is always pushing for more organic stuff, and organic wheat berries are all over the place for about a buck a pound online.

[ray hampton]

Gordon - since you're using your mill setup to bake bread, can you comment on any pluses or minuses of the baking process vs. using bagged flour? e.g., is the flour more or less forgiving, does it rise predictably and have good spring, etc. The reviews are good enough for the mill that I might like to give it a try, and my wife is always pushing for more organic stuff, and organic wheat berries are all over the place for about a buck a pound online.

how many lbs of wheat or corn will I need before grinding to made one lbs of flour or corn meal ? can pinto beans be grind or crack to cook quicker ?

[David Weaver]

If you're grinding wheat berries, you grind the whole thing (since it's bought without the hull), so you should get a pound of flour for a pound of berries unless the machine has a hollow leg somewhere or an elf attached to it that needs a little something to keep running.

[Ryan Mooney]

Gordon - since you're using your mill setup to bake bread, can you comment on any pluses or minuses of the baking process vs. using bagged flour? e.g., is the flour more or less forgiving, does it rise predictably and have good spring, etc. The reviews are good enough for the mill that I might like to give it a try, and my wife is always pushing for more organic stuff, and organic wheat berries are all over the place for about a buck a pound online.

If you're using 100% whole wheat already the difference is mostly minimal other than it tastes better (won't have that "acrid bite" a lot of whole wheat has - because its not rancid) and you have to watch that the volumes are different because it hasn't been packed down by the bagging/shipping process so it takes ~20-30% more by volume. Compared to white flour it hydrates a lot slower and you won't get as much rise from the same recipe/technique but that can be compensated for mostly with techniques. Personally I find the home ground (with the nutrimill) perhaps a smidge easier to use than most commercial flour as its a bit finer and definitely fresher.

If you're just getting into whole wheat (or want to learn a lot more) I'd highly recommend the book "Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor". A lot of his techniques are built around slow ferments so it takes longer by the wall clock but you actually spend less effort on the finished bread. This book kind of changed how I thought about making bread a lot. All of Peter Reinhart's that we have are good (also have "The Bread Bakers Apprentice" and I've looked at "Crust and Crumb") but the "Whole Grain Breads" book has imho a more directed explanation of what and why.

Before we had the Reinhart book we heavily used "The Laurels Kitchen Bread Book: A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking" and her basic sandwich loaf is still my go-to base recipe for sandwich bread. The Reinhart book tends to deal more with artisinal and rustic breads and less on "american style" breads. Both have their place and are imho worth having (but I probably have a book problem so take that for what its worth :D These would be the two I'd save out of the dozen or so bread specific books we have).

[David Weaver]

Thanks Ryan. I use trader joe's whole wheat pastry flour at this point and mix in some standard general mills bread flour. My wife complains about the general mills stuff, though. Usually also do a low/no knead 24 hour pot/dutch oven bread so a slow hydration and rise is fine with me. I've always liked that type of bread better, because it's got enough time to compensation for differences in temp and humidity in the house and it will always turn out very good, even if the whole wheat content is high.

I'd love to have fresh flour, though, I'm glad to find out that I'm wrong about the new mills, even if milling flour wasn't exactly a common thing until more recently (the whole issue of GMO or non-GMO would never be a problem when getting your wheat at a local mill - which is how it was done where I grew up all the way into the 40s or so. Most folks had combines or threshers that bagged wheat, so exchanging a couple of bags of wheat for a bag of flour probably wasn't much of a problem).

Given your location, you can probably find wheat everywhere out there. The ethanol mandate has nearly eliminated anything other than corn and soybeans in my end of the world. There is still some winter wheat grown, but not much.

[ray hampton]

If you're grinding wheat berries, you grind the whole thing (since it's bought without the hull), so you should get a pound of flour for a pound of berries unless the machine has a hollow leg somewhere or an elf attached to it that needs a little something to keep running.

I use the wrong word , instead of lbs it sound better if I ask how many cups of ungrind wheat will it take to produce one cup of flour

[Brian Elfert]

A friend of mine on a trip bought a bunch of wheat at Walmart of all places. He bought it on the trip because the Walmarts in Iowa don't sell wheat. He plans to grind it into flour. It wasn't clear if he makes his own flour because the raw wheat lasts longer, or if it is cheaper than buying flour. I know preppers often store wheat instead of flour.

[Ryan Mooney]

Thanks Ryan. I use trader joe's whole wheat pastry flour at this point and mix in some standard general mills bread flour. My wife complains about the general mills stuff, though. Usually also do a low/no knead 24 hour pot/dutch oven bread so a slow hydration and rise is fine with me. I've always liked that type of bread better, because it's got enough time to compensation for differences in temp and humidity in the house and it will always turn out very good, even if the whole wheat content is high.

I'd love to have fresh flour, though, I'm glad to find out that I'm wrong about the new mills, even if milling flour wasn't exactly a common thing until more recently (the whole issue of GMO or non-GMO would never be a problem when getting your wheat at a local mill - which is how it was done where I grew up all the way into the 40s or so. Most folks had combines or threshers that bagged wheat, so exchanging a couple of bags of wheat for a bag of flour probably wasn't much of a problem).

Given your location, you can probably find wheat everywhere out there. The ethanol mandate has nearly eliminated anything other than corn and soybeans in my end of the world. There is still some winter wheat grown, but not much.

Sounds like you're pretty already all there; the slow breads do rock :cool: If you haven't given it a shot yet, you might also consider doing a sourdough (which is effectively a continuous barm and can be started/managed like one although I usually restart mine from an whatever-was-living-on-the-grain culture). With that I can have fresh whole wheat pita bread or focaccia (or many similar classes of bread) on the table in ~45 minutes from start to finish using a really high proportion of the sourdough starter and just enough flour to make a soft dough; its already fully hydrated so no need to knead or wait for rise time (and they're primarily steam risen anyway so the yeast rise is less important).

If you were closer I'd grind you up enough for a batch of bread to try it out but probably not worth it to ship across country. I haven't tried TJ's flour but its at least as good or better than Bobs Red Mill which is a premium brand around here (and really good flour to be fair). We often mixed in some white until we started grinding our own and now most things are 100% whole wheat as successfully (the exceptions primarily being some pastrys and certain types of biscuits). I think primarily the two differences are we're using hard white wheat (most ww is hard red which has a higher bran content/coarser base structure) and the really nice grind gets us closer to white flour consistency.

I remember when I was a kid one year we tried growing our own wheat and at the small scale (~2 family size) it was definitely NOT worth it. We also used an ancient hand grinder that didn't make very good flour and took a body builder to run. The thresher was one of those older PTO driven galvanized steel units you see rusting along side the roads everywhere in wheat country; I seem to recall it taking a couple of weeks of work to get it barely functional again and a lot of bad words being said during the operation thereof.

Occasionally I do get lucky and can get some cheaper (or free/in trade) wheat, commercially its at least as bad or perhaps worse here price wise as it is around you from the looks of it. So much of the wheat has moved to mega farms as well that there isn't as much regional price differentiation anymore that I can see. A lot of the wheat here is Soft White as well (which surprised me as its mostly winter wheat so was expecting hard red or at least hard white) which has a pretty low gluten content so its ok for whole wheat pastry or biscuits but can be challenging for bread.


It wasn't clear if he makes his own flour because the raw wheat lasts longer, or if it is cheaper than buying flour. I know preppers often store wheat instead of flour.
Oddly (at least in my mind its odd) its actually usually more expensive for me to get whole kernel wheat than flour, especially compared to white flour. Compared to commercial "premium" whole wheat flour the last time I compared (which has admittedly been a while) I was around break even. Raw wheat definitely does last longer; I've seen numbers like up to 30 years in sealed containers (so there is at least a convenience factor for those of us who are anti-shopping as I don't have to go to the store all that often :D). Mostly I use it because I like the end result better.

[Michael Weber]

Bread baking is one of my former hobbies I did it for years and must have collected 20 books on how to make/knead(or not)/shape and bake it. Got whole berries shipped from a farm in North Dakota until shipping became too much. Got it in 5 gallon buckets. I ground it with a mill attachment for my KitchenAid mixer. Selectable grind from barely cracked to very fine. Baking bread can be additive. It can be frustrating too as there are hundreds of variables that determine your finished product, most of which cannot be controlled in a home kitchen. I made my share of bricks while trying to use coarsely ground whole wheat. Always in search of the perfect artisan loaf I threw away a lot of unsuccessful attempts lol. White bread is easy compared to whole wheat as the sharp edges of the bran puncture the gas bubbles in the dough causing it to collapse. A finer grind helps with that. Nothing better than buttered hot bread just out of the oven:p. Lots to learn. Basic bread to refrigerated rises allowing sugars to develop, you can go off the deep end if your not careful:rolleyes: but maybe that's a good thing. Good luck with you efforts.
ps. As an example of the deep end problem I bypassed the oven thermostat and used an industrial process controller to get better temperature regulation.

[Dave Sheldrake]

A quick additional question if I may gentlemen?

A distant memory tells me there is a particularly nasty disease/fungus/bacteria that lives in flour?, something referenced by the Plagues of Egypt as possibilities from memory.

Would anybody happen to know what it was or am I getting old and starting to mix things up :)

thanks

Dave

[Ryan Mooney]

A quick additional question if I may gentlemen?

A distant memory tells me there is a particularly nasty disease/fungus/bacteria that lives in flour?, something referenced by the Plagues of Egypt as possibilities from memory.

Would anybody happen to know what it was or am I getting old and starting to mix things up :)

thanks

Dave

I believe you are probably thinking of Ergot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergot although there are some other grain borne pathogens that is by far the most common historically. There is some evidence that it was used in Egypt as a mind altering substance so there could plausibly be a connection but I don't have any data on that one way or another besides the hand wave of hypothetically plausible.

[Dave Sheldrake]

That's it Ryan :) thanks

best wishes

Dave

[Gordon Eyre]

Gordon - since you're using your mill setup to bake bread, can you comment on any pluses or minuses of the baking process vs. using bagged flour? e.g., is the flour more or less forgiving, does it rise predictably and have good spring, etc. The reviews are good enough for the mill that I might like to give it a try, and my wife is always pushing for more organic stuff, and organic wheat berries are all over the place for about a buck a pound online.

100% whole wheat flour takes longer to rise and does not rise as high as store bought white flour. Also, the hard red wheat has a bit stronger taste and makes a heavier loaf. I personally like to use white wheat and mix it with white flour about 2/3 wheat and 1/3 white. It has a very predictable rise and I find one hour of rise time to work well for me.

Many people here in Utah make their own bread and the Nutrimill is the grinder of choice for those that can afford it. We have great sales on grinders on black Friday just before the new year. We also have several stores that sell wheat by the 50 lb. bag and I have purchased it for as low as $14 a bag although the current price is more like $19 to $20 a bag. We also have it in 35 lb buckets at Costco.

I still have about 20 buckets pf hard red that I purchased several years ago where a group of neighbors and fellow church members got together and bought a rail car load and filled our own buckets. That was really cheap.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

http://www.samsclub.com/sams/augason-farms-hard-red-wheat-45-lb-pail/prod4940312.ip
45 pound pail of red wheat.


Good grief, I get $9 for 60# and consider it ok money. That is a ridiculous markup. Find a farmer for the source. I happen to know one, I'd be happy to arrange delivery as well. 1-10,000 bushel lots! :)

The economics make me wonder, why do you guys want to grind your own?

[Ryan Mooney]

Good grief, I get $9 for 60# and consider it ok money. That is a ridiculous markup. Find a farmer for the source. I happen to know one, I'd be happy to arrange delivery as well. 1-10,000 bushel lots! :)

The economics make me wonder, why do you guys want to grind your own?

Ain't that the truth of the sad state of affairs! If only we could cut the middle man out everyone would be a whole lot happier.

As you've clearly deduced its not for the savings :D :rolleyes: Personally I mostly like the flavor better and I think its more nutritious than store white flour. I'm not really behind to speak of from store whole wheat and I get a lot fresher/better product. There is also some aspect of doing it yourself which I think probably resonates with a lot of folks on here.