Help! Gluten Free Milling
A few weeks ago I found out my husband needs to be gluten free, and I've been struggling up the cliff face learning curve. I love how well he is doing, but he has nothing to do with food except eat it! So its all on me to figure it all out. I've come to the decision that I want a mill instead of trying to A) find non cross contaminated flours in a small town, and B) afford them. I've read alot about gluten free baking the last few weeks and I want to be able to make my own superfine flour blends.
I will be getting a Bosch Universal in a few weeks to help me with all the prep work I have to do now, and was wondering if its mill attachment would be suitable, or if I need to get a dedicated mill. Sorta hoping the Bosch Universal mill attachment will do all this, but I have a budget of about $400 for a dedicated mill if it won't. Here is the list I've come up with, if you all have other suggestions, I'm all ears!
-Electric, doesn't get too hot so that it destroys the nutrients. Don't care about how long it takes or how loud it is, I can put it in a separate room.
-Mills tiny grains like amaranth and quinoa up to corn and legumes. If it has a separate small grain attachment for this, thats fine.
-Is able to grind from superfine for rice and tapioca flour to coarse like cornmeal.
-Oily capability for seeds and nuts would be really nice, since things like flax seeds are often used in baking, and I need a better spice grinder anyways.
I'm very interested how the bosch attachment will perform in all these catagories. If it performs well with the oily stuff, then the dedicated grinder wouldn't have to do that as well.
Thanks and looking forward to your responses!
When you or a family member are first diagnosed, the biggest priority is to get some foods established now because the person needs to eat-every day, as it turns out. Try single ingredient foods at first- meat,vegetables,potatoes,rice, fruit. Start developing your supplies, knowledge and recipes.
Pancakes are always easy-even gluten free. In America we always serve them sweet-with syrup or jam, but remember they can also be served savory. How about corn pancakes with a ladle of chili over?
Many delicious GF breads are easily made just with a bowl and spatula. They are in a class called batter breads where the dough is the consistency of a thick cake batter-very easy to make.
There is plenty of info and websites out there.
http://celiac.org/
http://www.yammiesglutenfreedom.com/2013/07/the-best-gluten-free-white-bread.html
http://www.yammiesglutenfreedom.com/2013/04/gluten-free-flour-tortillas.html
http://glutenfreegirl.com/
As far as milling your own grains, I do laud your dedication but I do have to ask if it will be any easier to acquire GF grains in a small town than the flours? Also, it adds a significant layer of time-consuming work. Amazon can be amazing and often has free shipping (and that is where they really stick it to you).
Does the local hospital have any resources available to you-talk to the Dietary department.
Is there any type of organic/whole food store nearby? 7th day Adventist store? They often have bulk grains of many kinds.
Is there an oriental/Asian market in town? They are often a good source of the starches like potato starch or flour, tapioca starch.
A GF diet can be delicious. The mistake many people make is trying to make GF into gluten-wannabe food. The real difficulty of eating GF is when you eat outside the home or in other peoples homes. In our society, we do that often and that is very missed.
Good luck, hang in there.
Thanks for the response and all the helpful links, clazar. Those tortillas look lovely! I've pretty much got my brain wrapped around what to do at home, and I've got some good friends in town who have been gluten free for a while and they have been incredibly helpful. He doesn't really eat alot of bread type things in general, so I'm not really trying to replace huge amounts of bready things. The closest store like whole foods is an hour and a half drive away, and everything is amazingly expensive. I can buy bulk bags of organic grains like rice and corn online for about what it would cost to buy 3-4 lbs of already milled flour, and it's a real chore to wade through all the cross contamination stuff to see if its *really* gluten free. That's why I just want to mill my own, it will pay for itself in under a year, and I'll never have to worry about cross contamination.
I really just need advice on how well the Bosch mill works for the categories I listed, what categories I might have missed (lol), and advice on what dedicated mill would be able to grind as fine and coarse as I want that's within my price range. There is quite a bit of information online about the dedicated mills, but almost nothing that I can find on the Bosch attachment. I don't want to get it if I can get a dedicated electric mill that can just do everything. And I don't want to get a dedicated mill if the bosch attachment will do it all! I have a pretty tiny kitchen and would prefer to save the counter space :)
I know that several people on this site have a bosch and was hoping for input from people that actually have the mill attachment on how fine/coarse it grinds and how well it works.
My daughter has an old Bosch with the mill and uses it for milling hard, red wheat. The mixer/mill is about 30 yrs old and has seen frequent use. It mills it very fine WW flour. It is not advisable to use for oily seeds and there may be a corn limitation ( very hard grain!).
I believe the people at Pleasant Valley Grain can be helpful. I am on my phone with limited internet so I cannot check for a link. Do a search for the Bosch here and look in the milling forum.
Good luck.
Edit: Oops. We are already in the Milling forum. I can't see all the headers easily.
is really just a Family Grain mill with a Bosch adapter. I think your research using that info will confirm my results with it. While it is handy the grains really don't reach a fine flour consistency even if run through 2x. I went that route originally and was not thrilled with the results but held onto it since I bought it with a crank to work it manually in the event of a long term power failure. I ended up with a Komo which is wonderful. Many good things are said regarding Wondermill as well one of which I purchased but never used and will probably sell at a loss on Ebay. Love my Bosch but in addition to the regular bowl I purchased the stainless bowl with the bottom mounted dough hook. Good Luck!!
Yes, I looked into it too because it's the same mill they sell for my Ankarsrum mixer. I wasn't impressed, so I went with the Komo after looking into a bunch of other mills.
I've not purchased anything from Only Grain Mills, but they do have some very good video reviews of the various mills available, including the Family Grain Mill used with the Bosch. Here is a link to their video page, where you will find a video on electric mills, amongst others: http://www.onlygrainmills.com/onlygrainmills-original-videos/.
We purchased the Country Living Grain Mill, which is fantastic but definitely not as easy to use as an electric. It will handle everything (even makes peanut butter), and can be motorized, but it's expensive and big (esp. with the motor) and I'm thinking you would probably be happiest with something else.
Don't forget about the little Bosch Compact, unless you plan on doing very large batches of dough at a time. It gets very good reviews from owners and is a lot more reasonable than the big Bosch.
Grace to you as you climb up the learning curve! We are trying to go more gluten free, though there are not any medical stipulations at present. It really is a new world! Glad you have a lot of support from friends who have headed that way already.
Edited to add: They have a section on gluten-free milling that I just noticed. How neat is that? http://www.onlygrainmills.com/gluten-free/
I appreciate your time, folks! I've been wondering if the bosch mill was the Family Grain mill. There are alot of things that seemed to be pointing to that, but there was nothing definate. That helps alot with my research! I've heard alot of nice things about the Pleasant Hill company, I will see if I can find some answers there as well. The info from Only Grain Mills looks like a great resource, I'll be digging into that for sure.
I've had my eye on the Wonder Mill, it looks like it might do what I want for the dry grains, but it won't work for anything oily at all, which is why I was hoping for some advice on a mill that can do both. That Country Living mill looks like a beast! And it looks like it does everything I'd ever want! But it's out of my price range even without the motor assembly, and I'm not sure I need something that huge, lol. Is there something like it but smaller and a bit less expensive? I wouldn't mind a mill that can go back and forth between manual and motorized, it would be a good workout when I'm feeling up to it, but I have health issues myself and I don't want me feeling up to it to be a condition of whether I'm milling or not.
fotomat, I've seen the stainless bowl and the bottom mounted dough hook for the bosch, but was having a hard time figuring out why I would want that, but I admit I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to this stuff. Does it have superiour kneeding functionality or something? And would I need it for gluten free stuff where I'm not developing gluten anyways? I'm not planning on ever going back to a glutenized kitchen, its just hubby and me in the house and I'll eat what he does here, lol. I also don't want to risk cross contamination, because he has a lot of health issues besides just the GI ones from the gluten, and so will probably never use it for gluten, even if I'm baking for someone else.
If I was willing to go permanent mount hand crank I'd get the Grainmaker mill. It's made in Montana and you can do everything from nut butters to pastry flour and oily seeds like flax. If I ever buy another mill that is the one I'm buying. I'm very happy with my Komo mill though and it's portable and electric.
an electric mill that will do it all. I use a spice grinder for seeds and a nut or meat grinder for oily things. Both are available for Bosch. Most times a small manual grinder is all you need....stainless bowl works well for me in its kneading and far easier clean up. Check this out as well.......... http://willitgrind.com/
Another option, depending on your location. Try going to http://www.boschkitchencenters.com and search the store locator. They have home demonstrators all over the country. If the search tool doesn't pull anyone up, then call them and ask. Maybe one is near you. You can get accurate answers in person on the Bosch attachments and get your milling questions answered. Good luck.