New Year, New Mill, More Bread
I've had it about two weeks now and so far I'm pretty happy. As I hoped for it does make a very nice fine flour. Soft and without grittiness. But to get this it is not very fast. I think it took 20 minutes to mill about 3 kilos of hard wheat if memory serves correct. The flour warms to about 100F which is just fine. When i do larger millings than that I'll break it up and let the machine cool for 30 minutes between. The best part is milling range. I can go as coarse as cracked grain all the way to powdery fluffy flour. Something the impact mill can't do. Also the way the machine was built makes it very easy to access the stones and clean or dress if ever needed. So far so good. I'll keep you posted as I use it more and more.
Pic at top is the mill, 100% Whole Wheat with Honey (hybrid), Multigrain Boules, and 50% white wheat tortillas
Here are some of the first loaves made using flour from the Nutrimill Harvest Grain Mill
Some sourdough with 12% Fresh Milled Wheat
"Country Bread" from J.H.'s "Bread" (with 7% Wheat and 3% Rye freshly milled
Cheers and Happy Baking
Josh
Comments
And beautiful crumb - I love the way the bubbles stream to the top!
Cheers
very nice. Glad that the new mill is doing good for you. The sourdough looks great. So when are the tortillas going to be available?
If and when i buy a tortilla press so I can crank em out faster than hand rolled. Not that hand rolling is hard but if i wanted to make a lot a press would be the answer. I'll keep ya posted
Josh
50% White Wheat Tortillas
50% AP
50% Fresh Milled Hard White Wheat
2 % Salt
18% Olive Oil or Lard if you want to get traditional
52% H20
1) Blend Flour with salt and then add the Oil/Lard until crumbly and well incorporated
2) Add H20 and mix until an even dough is formed.
3) Divide at 50g for smaller or 75g for larger and preshape round
3) Rest 30 minutes
4) Heat a skillet to medium high and roll tortillas using a little flour 1/8" thick
5) Place in pan and cook til you see it puff and bubbles. flip and cook 20-30 seconds longer
6) stack tortillas with paper towel between so they don't stick together. Enjoy
-Use as little flour as you can for rolling or they will dry out easily. They roll pretty easy and the grease in the dough keeps them from sticking badly. Just a touch of flour to help.
- Once cooled wrap in plastic to keep from drying.
but they would be better with a tsp of baking powder in them! These would make make fabulous very thin and crispy personal pizzas too, as long as you don't get too crazy with the toppings like we do around here. Much better with leaf lard too.
for chemical levaining in tortillas. They were fabulous and baking powder would make them puff too much and could add off flavors. The lard though would take em up a notch but many can't get their hands on it, particularly good lard.
Josh
without BP but you would be about the only one in the barrio doing so. With baking powder, you can roll them much thinner and when the puff up, something you want in flour tortillas (like big holes in SD white bread) they are light as a feather instead of eating of eating a Mexican dry fried mazoh:-) You can get good lard at any Hispanic grocery. No lard - no BP - no flour tortillas.....same with masa....Granny is turning over in her grave :-)
I'd assume the oldest or "authentic" methods for tortilla used a stone ground corn or wheat flour (maybe sifted) lard, water, and salt. There was no BP. There really is no need for BP here. With the fat you create layers in the dough similar to pie dough. Less flakiy as the dough is a bit more incorporated than a pie dough which we barely mix at all. I got huge pockets and bubbles, was able to roll paper thin with very little flour, and they were very much like a tortilla and nothing like matzah. A good tortilla at that. In fact the house smelled like butter popcorn as they toasted from the white wheat and the oil.
Granny would roll over in her grave maybe because I used fancy oil instead of lard but she doesn't know what baking powder is.... :)
Josh
Very, very nice. You've raised the bar way high up... If only...
Thank you for sharing and all the best,
Cathy
Thanks Cathy
Josh: Just spectacular. These loaves look perfect. The crust, crumb, scoring. You must be so pleased. You could open a store with all these wonderful loaves. Fantastic photos as well. Thanks for sharing. Best, Phyllis
Perfect is that unattainable thing that makes life worth it but yes I was pleased with these bakes and my dream is my own bakery. Time will tell
Cheers
Josh
Wow, those are lovely. Glad to hear you are having fun with your new toy!
perfect ad for both expensive and less expensive mills! Both seem to make great bread when made by a fine baker. Enjoy your new mill Josh and
Happy Baking with it in 2015
Tutto straordinariamente impeccabile e chissà che bontà......
Una bella fetta con un filio di olio extravergine di oliva ed il mondo ci sorride!!!!
Grazie della bellissima condivisione.
Anna
Did some one say "Wow!" already?
That mill is a beautiful piece of furniture.
What difference do you feel the fresh-milled wheat makes at 7-12%? Why not use all fresh-milled wheat?
I'm slowly building up to home milling (beyond what little I've done with the KA attachment), but there is so much I don't know about how to get the most out of it.
Thanks in advance. And, again, I don't care if they were made out of plaster of Paris. Those loaves are beautiful sculpture.
David
If you do you will never look back.
There is flavor that comes from fresh milled flour that takes bread a step further in my humble opinion. Mill some rye berries and just smell the aroma it produces. No bag of Rye in the store smells that good.
The 7% and 12% refer to the amount of wheat in the total formula not the pre-ferments. In fact the J.H. Country Bread the whole grain is all in the final dough. Really wanted to "follow" his formula but a true country loaf has some whole grain in it and I just don't care much for 100% white loaves The 12% in the Sourdough is all Fresh Red Wheat in the Stiff Levain.
To get the most out of home milling.
Well for starters you'd never need to buy bags of whole grain flour...Buying the whole grain is cheaper, has much better shelf life which will allow you to further savings buying bulk if you have the room, and has better taste. Even the best Mills don't write the date of milling on the bags of their whole grain flours. Sure you could call and find out but it's not something they are proud enough to put on the label. How old is that flour???
Natural Cultures strive on fresh milled whole grains.
The older the flour gets the less it's nutritional content or so I've read. Fresh flour has the most of the goods.
So health (for us), health (for our sourdough cultures, superior flavor), cost, flexibility.
Ahhh the flexibility. Want fresh steal cut oats? Now you can crack your own. Want fresh buckwheat flour for pasta? Now you can mill your own.
Oh and did I forget to mention how fun it is to turn the berry into wine? I mean berry into flour? It's fun
Cheers David
Josh
Wow!
Had to to stop by and admire your work, Josh. Fantastic loaves! great mill too.
Great work. good luck with your bakery plans.
Khalid
Thanks Khalid. Your loaves have been looking quite stellar on the IG as well.
Hope all is well
Josh
Hey Josh. You are making me wanting a home mill just a little bit more...
These loaves look perfect. Have some fun with that new toy!
John
I believe a grain mill should be in every home. It's a whole new game once you can create your own flours. And a fun one that lasts longer than Monopoly.
Josh
Bread looks awesome as always. Nice to see you broke down and got a better mill. I think for my Birthday I might have to take the plunge and get the same one...we will see. Have to use my dehydrator and sprout some durum berries first :).
Regards,
Ian
It's only downfall compared to it's former model is it's slower by a long shot but that's to be expected. I actually thought they would have improved on the impact machine opposed to a stone mill. I thought if the impact mill had two feeds going to separate mill heads, one for finer, one for coarser it would have been a huge upgrade. Still searching for the right sifter myself so i can now make my own HiX Flours.
Funny thing happened recently. I sprouted a bunch of rye for a loaf and had extra and left them to dry figuring I'd make a loaf with some sprouted rye flour. I followed suit a week later and made a loaf with 10% "Sprouted Rye" Turns out that sprouted Rye had gone to malt. All was well til I baked the loaves and the dough that felt so good collapsed in the oven and had a squishy feeling to it. It was like set jelly on the inside. Then I realized what I had done. Wasted a bunch of good Rye Malt.
Cheers
Josh
That sucks about the rye malt...live and learn :)
Let me know what sifters you end up getting. I have one that is useless with the current mill but hopefully soon I will be able to buy one like yours. Where did you end up buying yours and what did you pay if you don't mind me asking?
Thanks,
Ian
I have is useless for X flours as well. With such little info I'm hesitant to buy what I've found online. I don't really want to spend money on something that is wrong. But I do think I'll buy a tambourine powdered sugar sifter and see how it goes from a local shop as they take any and all returns. I'll let you know how that goes.
New mill is over at pleasanthillgrain.com and costs $299. After selling my other NM for $150 to a friend it was a doable upgrade. Sure they have the other more popular mill but I've heard it doesn't mill fine enough as I'd like. And I had a hunch NM's focus would be to still provide a very good fine flour. My hunch worked out. But it is much much slower, as expected. So far I'm a happy camper. I'll just have to figure out what the most grain I want to run before giving the machine breaks is. Seems like 2KG is probably smart. Then shut down for 30 minutes and continue. That is of course when I'm milling the finest setting. The flour warms to just around 100F when going on fine setting. But it seems to not get much warmer. The machine starts to get warm after a couple kilos though.
Cheers
Josh
So you bought the Komo knockof. So you think it's basically the same? That's not much more than my current mill which was $250.
Josh,
Nothing like showing beautiful bread to a baker and congratulations on your success with the new mill and the beautiful flour it turns out.
Wild-Yeast
Thanks for the kind words. Nothing like making flour as needed.
Josh
Hi, I'm thinking of buying this mill. Is the wheat flour as fine as storebought? Also, does it leave flakes of bran (which I like) or is the grind completely homogeneous? Your bread looks beautiful!
Thanks!
of grinds from cracked to super fine. I'm certain you can find the spot for boulting. One for warning. on fine setting after about 2 kg the machine needs a rest. I wish it could go longer myself but I do 1kg rest a bit and get thru my milling
josh
Thanks, I do smaller batches of baking at a time, and for bread no more than 6 cups of flour at once. Do you think it would handle that? Also have you experimented with any beans or legumes?
Thanks!
at those volunes this would be great. Well...it's only a month old but so far so good. I have milled rice which worked just fine but other than that just bread berries.
Josh
So I've recently discovered this machine is making the flour way too hot when milled on a fine setting and after just small quantities of grain. I'm in the works of returning the mill as we speak.
Do you think your particular unit is defective?
I just don't think it was thought through well enough.
I'll either get the old Classic impact or just use my friends Diamant until I find s better solution.
Josh
Are you getting another one or a different brand?
Would appreciate an update on the mill you would like, or have bought.
Regards,
Tom