Thanks Firetoad for all the great pictures and your review. I am looking for a good manual grain mill and will certainly consider this one that you have reviewed.
**Question for forum members:** I have also seen grinders (on ebay and other places) that offer not only a manual grain mill, but one that incorporates rollers for use in making your own rolled oats (I guess you could roll all types of grains, but especially oats). Any experience with that type of machine? The one I've been looking at is here (Marcato Grain Mill with rollers):
http://www.amazon.com/Harold-Import-Company-Inc-8308/dp/B000UV492E/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1243692027&sr=8-5I have been grinding my own wheat for bread for quite a long time now. However, when I started it I wasn't thinking about the possibility of having no power available. I bought a simple grinding attachment that works on my Kitchenaid mixer. I will share a few things that may be of help to those who are new to homeground flour.
1. The flour does turn out to be a bit more coarse with this type of grinder. However, I believe this actually has health benefits. The coarse grind of the flour makes it a bit less easy for the body to convert to sugar and so perhaps a bit lower glycemic (for those interested in blood sugar levels). This was my original motivation for learning to do this.
2. When you grind your own flour, you must use it or freeze it very quickly. It will begin to go bad after you grind it. I have never kept mine on the shelf at all after grinding. What I don't use goes immediately into the freezer for the next time. The great thing is that, in a no-power-available situation, you can just grind what you need at the time and not have to worry about spoilage. The wheat berries keep a very long time as long as you don't grind them up.
3. Baking bread with homeground whole wheat is different than making bread with flour from the store. I have a recipe that has worked well that I'll share at the end. Whatever recipe you use, it will help you a lot to add about 1 T. vital wheat gluten (available in grocery stores near the flour) per each 3 cups of flour in your recipe. Without it, your bread will be very heavy and never rise like you would want.
4. In normal situations, you can accustom yourself to making all your own bread this way and use the convenience of a bread machine if you like. I find that I don't like the bread machine for actually baking the bread, but let it do all the kneading for me. Then, when it has finished the kneading process (through two knead cycles) I put the bread into my own greased pans and let them rise (the rising time varies, so the inflexibility of the machine makes it impractical in my opinion) and then bake in your own oven.
5. When you grind the wheat berries, you get quite a bit more flour than the measured wheat berries you put in the grinder. I forget the exact ratio, but I think I get about 1 1/3 cup of flour for each cup of wheat berries...
My Whole Wheat recipe (suitable for bread machine)
1 cup water
3 T. vegetable oil (use 4 T. if you don't add the ground flax seed)
2 or 3 T. honey (to your taste... the 3 T. is a pretty sweet taste)
1 egg
1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats
3 cups homeground whole wheat flour
1 T. vital wheat gluten
3 T. ground flax seed (optional)
1 1/2 tsp. salt (I like kosher salt)
2 1/2 tsp. yeast (don't overdo the yeast)
In my machine, it calls for liquid ingredients to be used first. If your machine directions call for dry ingredients first, just reverse the order.
I add the ingredients in the order listed above for my machine. For the yeast, I make a small indentation forming a little well in the flour and put the yeast there.
Turn on the machine and let it run. Let it continue through to the second kneading (usually take about 1 hour for my machine). Then, take the dough out and form into either 1 large loaf or 2 small loaves. Place into greased bread pans and let rise until doubled. It will go faster if you put into an unheated oven with the light on.
Bake at 350 degrees until nicely toasted on the sides. For the two loaves (what I usually do), it takes about 25 minutes.
