How many grind your own flour and where do you buy the grains?

[moolie]

I bought a Family Grain Mill from Pleasant Hill Grain. I got the hand cranked model for $139. It works great. This mill also has an option for an electric motor, and different attachments for roller milling and other tasks. It will not mill corn though. Pleasant Hill Grain was good to deal with.

We have the same mill, with both the electric and hand cranks, I think it cost us around $260 total and also had a lovely experience dealing with Pleasant Hill Grain.

We love it, and it grinds quite quickly with the electric base, ditto on Theo's hand-cranking experience--it's a bit monotonous, but you get exactly the same result as electric (just takes longer). We bake 4 loaves of bread every week and do the same as Theo--we add a cup or two of white flour (organic, unbleached, no additives) for better gluten chains.

Just a note about using it for corn though, you can grind dent corn in this mill, just not popcorn--it's too hard. Other than the wheat-type grains we've also ground rice and oats into flour with it and I'm currently on the lookout for dent corn after reading a cool article in Mother Earth News over the fall about a particular variety (called Floriani Red Flint, article was in the M.E.N. Food and Garden Series: Guide to Fresh Food All Year).

We buy organic hard red and hard white wheat locally from www.bridensolutions.ca or our local organic/health food shops, along with rice, oats, rye, spelt, and beans--50# bags or they also offer 48# in a 6 gallon bucket for a few things at Briden. We've also bought from www.incaseof.ca/store although they are a little further away (about 2.5 hours drive).

These links are both for Canadian suppliers located here in Alberta, so probably not that helpful to the OP but perhaps helpful to other Canucks reading along. Both sell organic as well as regular grains, rice, beans and other storage food and supplies (such as water storage containers, grain mills, buckets and gamma seal lids, survival kits etc.) we just prefer organic.

 

[peteyfoozer]

Thank you for your responses! I will definitely look into that mill. The hand crank wouldn't work too well for me because of my RA, but the price on the electric isn't too bad. I can put that in the budget for next year! I am really looking forward to this, and learning anything I can about using whole grains.

 

[ORChick]

I get my grains from Azure Standard - http://www.azurestandard.com/ - depending on where you live, and how much you order, the shipping can be free.
I also have the Family grain mill, and am very happy with it. I have the hand crank version, but I got the adapter for my Kitchen Aid as well, so I can let the machine do it when I have other things to do, or am feeling lazy .

 

[Theo]

Moolie, thanks for the info about the dent corn. I want to grow some this year, and I was hoping I wouldn't need a new mill just for corn. Do you think the mill will grind flint corn?

 

[Rebbetzin]

I have both a Family Grain Mill, non electric, and a Vitamix. I get grain at the local Healthfood stores, whoever has the cheapest price at the time. I only buy a couple pounds at a time. I could get a better price if I bought it from one of the local Co-ops.

My daughter has a Wonder Mill/Whisper Mill, it is great!!
http://www.thewondermill.com/

The flour comes out very nice!
And her breads are always wonderful!!

Many times I use the whole grain cereals to make bread.
You can either grind the cereal, or cook it and use the cooked cereal as the base for the bread.

One of my families favorite bread recipes, and a must have item for Thanksgiving is...

Pilgrim Bread


2 cups water cup molasses
cup butter 4-6 cups of flour (depends on the humidity)
cup corn meal 1pkg yeast dissolved in cup very warm water
1tsp salt



Stir cornmeal into 2cups of cold water and salt in a small pan,
cook until cornmeal is completely soft. Stirring quite often so
as not to burn on the bottom of the pan.

Remove from stove, stir in the butter and the molasses
let cool until still warm but not so hot as to kill the yeast.
Add the dissolved yeast. Then add flour until smooth and not sticky

Let rise in warm place until doubled. punch down.
Shape into loaf, place in well greased bread pan.
Let rise until about doubled...


Bake at 350 until bottom of loaf sounds hollow when tapped

Appox. 35 to 45 min.

 

[mrscoyote]

Thank you Rebbetzin
OMG I just made the pilgrim bread and it is amazing! My whole family loves it.
Nancy

 

[Rebbetzin]

Thank you Rebbetzin
OMG I just made the pilgrim bread and it is amazing! My whole family loves it.
Nancy

You're quite welcome! It is a great recipe!!

And using the same basic idea with any cooked cereal
makes for a wonderful loaf of bread!

 

[Blue Egg Jo]

I have been using a Victorio hand crank grain mill. It was a gift (I think it was ~$60) but so far it has been great. I do not grind my flour all the time..sometimes I do miss just all-white all purpose flour, but I do like to use half and half now. I get my wheat from either the natural foods store or another store that sells wheat berries in bulk, I forget how much it costs per pound but it is not that bad, maybe .50. I have a hard time finding hard spring white berries locally though.

 

[k15n1]

The cost of grain mills is really high---too high, in my opinion. I could make a lot of mistakes for 550 $. Or even 150 $.

The homebrew crowd has plans out there for how to build a roller mill. They mainly want as little flour as possible because it'll gum up when you're trying to soak the sugars out of the malt, but you can set the gap to any size, or do several passes, to maximize flour production.

The short version of the plans:

1. For the rollers, use concrete or 3" steel pipe. I've even seen hard-wood rollers A rough surface is
best, so use a cold chisel on the pipe. A larger roller is better (8--9"), but that'll make it heavy.

2. Rollers should be no more than 4x longer than their diameter

3. Bearings can be greased plain bearings. I like flanged bronze bearings with high-carbon steel shafts.

4. With a lot of gear reduction, an 1/8 HP motor can run the mill. I have had bad experiences with
too-small motors, so I'll use a 1-HP motor in my mill.

 

[tamlynn]

Look at all the yummy bread!

I buy wheat from a LDS Family Home Storage Center. There is a center near me (Los Angeles), but there are many throughout the US and Canada. A 25 pound bag of either hard red or white wheat at a Storage Center is $11.45.

Here is a map of the storage centers. You do not have to be Mormon or LDS to buy their products:
http://www.providentliving.org/location/map/0,12566,2026-1-4,00.html

Anyone in the US can order cases of #10 cans of red or white wheat. Shipping is free.
http://store.lds.org/webapp/wcs/sto...gId=-1&storeId=715839595&ddkey=http:ClickInfo


I prefer a white wheat for bread, but sometimes mix it with red too. You'll just have to try different kinds to see what you like.