KitchenAid Grain Mill
Okay, the lure of bread made with fresh ground flour got the better of me. It is all your fault (pointing the finger at many people such as DAB and Cedar Mountain among others) for tempting me and singing the siren song of freshly milled flour. Hubby found the KitchenAid Grain Mill on sale for $169 as opposed to the regular price of $209. So I caved and bought it.
I know it isn't the best mill out there but it will give me a taste of what you are all raving about. My question is what should I look for to get the best use out of this? I believe I read that double milling flour isn't a good idea with this attachment and to make sure to let it cool down for an hour minimum if it starts getting hot. Thanks in advance for your tips, tricks or suggestions.
Just get some winter white wheat, and some hard red, spring or winter and try some recipes. You may have to adjust your hydration
If whole wheat is your thing, there is nothing better than the fresh, sweet grassy taste of freshly ground whole wheat flour in your bread. It becomes a major part of the flavor profile for some of my breads, like my Breakfast Bread-a cardamom,craisin,walnut loaf. It just doesn't taste the same with even good store-bought WW flour!
I have not used the Kitchenaid mill but it sounds like it might heat up as it grinds. I have a larger Nutrimill and a small (pretty old) Regal grain mill (just good for a few cups at a time. The Nutrimill explodes the grains into a pretty fine flour but the Regal makes a larger, grainier flour. Both heat the grains as they mill and the resulting flour can reach about 130F after running 8 cups of grain through the Nutrimill. This can cause the starch in the flour to degrade and then it is only good for flatbreads! I have found that it works better if I freeze the wheat berries before milling. Mill right from the freezer.
If the KitchenAid mill tends to grind a little larger-grained flour, just account for this by increasing the hydration and planning a long soak/autolyze in the recipe. All my breads came out fine if I accounted for it this way. That and making sure you develop the starch in the dough to a nice windowpane-even with 100% WW!
Have fun!
Get a couple of sieves or strainers of different fineness, and sift the resulting flour to see what the 'bits' look like. You can sift out the largest particles with a coarse sieve and add them to the soaker or pre-ferment to soften them up, then use the rest of the high-extraction flour in the dough.
I'm finding different grains are very different in how they mill. Hard red spring wheat and Kamut are difficult to mill, while spelt is a lot softer. Barley and rye are different again. Mill a bit and test the flour with a finger to see how warm it is after milling. The different grains will react differently.
fine as the Nutrimill but I don't find that a problem at all. There are many times I want a more coarse grind and have to mill it in the coffee grinder to get it since the Nutrimill doesn't do this well. The big difference besides better, aroma, flavor and taste is that the flour will be more thirsty and things will happen a bit faster. Having whole grain flour to bake with instead of not whole grain flour you buy makes a big difference. Having fresh sprouted whole grain flour is the best of all.
Now you can make some really great bread! Lucky you:-)
I am using whole grain flour already as it is flour from our local miller. He only sells at farmers markets and a few locally owned stores. Quite a few of our local restaurants use his flour. Now that being said, I don't know how fresh it is. The store don't carry huge quantities of it, only a few bags at a time and they seem to go pretty fast. I do keep that flour in the fridge for freshness. I am really curious to see the taste difference.
We are having our Xmas dinner this Saturday (Parents head to Texas for the winter and usually they are gone by now but mom had her knee replaced). So do I dare try milling some Spelt and Kamut for the bread I am bringing? I am redoing the Triple Kamut with Flax and making up a Triple Spelt with Flax recipe. Maybe I mill a bit of each and make up the rest with the flours I already have...
How far ahead of your dough making do you mill the grains into flour?
I mill immediately before mixing. I've never used the KA mill so no comment on that. I do love my Komo mill though.
I have a KGM and used it for a year or two before I got a Komo. I got around the coarse flour problem two ways: I put a circular teflon disk (cut with a cork borer) where the pin carrying the removable burrs hits the housing, so that I could bring the two plates closer together. You have to be careful not to tighten down the grind to the point of plates rubbing against each other, which you cannot do without such a hack.
Equally valuable, without the teflon disk, is to mill directly onto a 55# or 65# sieve (I got mine from Fantes), as suggested above. I would place the tami over a stainless bowl and mill right onto it. Then cover the tami with a dispo shower cap (to keep the flour from coating every surface in the kitchen) and shake until all that can pass through is through. Then tip the retained fraction into a loaf pan (convenient size) and then tip that back into the hopper and mill it, again onto the tami. If I recall, I would do this three or four times to get 80% of the original weight milled fine enough to pass through the tami. I would soak the retained fraction prior to dough mixing. It made fabulous bread. I doubt that my Komo makes as nice flour as that, but it does it in about 1/20 the time.
And in answer to your last question - I always mill immediately before mixing the levain, which means 5 hours before mixing the dough. But you can mill anytime. Some people mill a few pounds for a month worth of baking. Experts say flour should age for 3w before baking, but I've certainly never found that to be the case in my hands. Then again, I've never tried aging flour.
Happy milling, sieving and baking.
Tom
Danni, I usually mill once a week, whatever I don't use immediately, I store in the freezer. I have read it keeps much better in the freezer.