November 15, 2007 - 12:57pm
Can you get bread flour from a corona mill?
I've posted this elsewhere, but now that there is a specific forum, I will try again.
I have one of the hand cranked corona mills that I use for cracking grains for breads and for my daughter's porridge. However, I can't get the flour fine enough to any traditional breads. Have any of you been able to use these crude mills for anything resembling the bread we bake from store-ground flour?
-Loafer
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No, you can't get a fine enough flour from this mill.
The Corona hand mill was the first mill I owned and I actually used it for several years. I could never get a fine enough flour from it to make whole wheat bread (even a "whole wheat" bread that also used a significant % of white flour). I even tried milling the grain multiple times to try to get the four finer. I could only use flour produced by the Cornona in small amounts to give a kind of texture to the bread.
If you want to make whole wheat bread with a high percent (or 100%) whole wheat flour, you need that flour to be finely milled. The Corona mill is incapable of producing a finely milled wheat flour (or a finely milled flour period, regardless what grain you're using). As you've discovered, it's really only suitable for cracked grain and coarse grits.
I made a mistake when I bought it but that was several decades ago (they've been around forever) and there weren't many mills to chose from at that time. It was sheer stubborness on my part that I used it as long as I did.
subfuscpersona that was my experience too. I even tried various stages of sifting and re-grinding. I have settled upon the fact that I would need a Country Living mill to do what I really want, but just haven't been able to pony up the $300!
-Loafer
...I'm asking since you mentioned the Country Living grain mill.
This mill has also been around a long time and was certainly one I drooled over in my earlier periodic researches into grain mills.
Do you know what material the grinding plates are made from now for this mill? If they're still stone, you won't be able to mill an oily seed such as soybeans.
If you're looking for a hand operated mill, I've got the Porkert Mill, and it produces very nice flour for bread. It usually takes two or three passes to get it as fine as I like, tightening the settings for each pass, but the final flour is really quite fine.
It's available in the Johnny's seed catalog (Johnnyseeds.com) and sells for $60.50.
Of course, being hand operated, I don't grind nearly as much of my own flour as I should, but it's always worth it when I do!
edh
edit-I just checked the Johnny's website and couldn't find the mill itself, just replacement burrs. The phone # is 1-800-854-2580, the item # for the mill is 9176.