just milled our first flour - spelt - and have questions
so i bought some spelt berries, my husband used our new wonder jr to mill a little flour, and the bread i made a few minutes later was mindblowingly delicious. it's almost ridiculously better and more flavor than the same loaf using commercial whole grain spelt flour (i've used four different brands, two brands frequently). it could have been partly the new source for the spelt, but our fresh flour was awesome to work with as well as to eat - less sticky, softer and easier to handle in all ways..
i'm clueless. i know i don't want to leave a bunch of fresh milled flour around or it can go rancid. so i have a few questions that hopefully some of you can answer.
can i freeze or vacuum seal spelt berries with no issues with taste or texture when used? or is it better to put them in a bucket with oxygen absorbers, and if so, can you please tell me why it's better? i'd like to buy 40 pounds of the spelt berries, but only if i can store them so they last. we won't be using more than a couple pounds a week probably, some weeks maybe less.
can i freeze or vacuum seal the freshly milled flour; if i do, will it last a little longer?
i've read that freshly milled flour goes rancid fairly quickly, but is it good for a week or two at room temperature? a couple days?
Fresh milled flour is a game changer!
Grains store really well. As long as they are dry and cool they are good for decades. They freeze well too but I don't see the need for taking up precious freezer space.
I mill all grains fresh for each bake. The flour doesn't keep well and I find the whole point is to mill right before mixing the dough. I have kept some leftovers but I find the flavour isn't the same. I do autolyse fresh flour though. It helps taking on water.
i've got tons of freezer space but in mid-summer, no spot in our condo is under 80 degrees unless we run the A/C, which we don't always as it's not central.
when i made that first fresh-milled flour loaf, i made a soda bread, so no autolyse. it did take an extra minute for the water to absorb - usually i throw this loaf together for less than a minute and throw it in the oven, and at a minute, it really needed that second minute - but after that it worked out perfectly.
I have a Wondermill Jr too. I've used it twice in three years.
I need to explain the background, so you see where I'm coming from, for my recommendation.
The Jr. just ain't as simple as a counter-top motorized unit. maybe you have some place where you can set it up permanently, and cover it up to keep dust off. But I have to completely take down mine and store it.
And all the fiddle-farting around to adjust it and clean it. When you take it apart to clean, you undo your adjustments.
I now use a 1/2 manual method, running the grain (about 5 pounds) first through a Shule brand (actually a Chinese copy) "grain-cracker", then run the cracked grain, 8 oz at a time, through my Vitamix blender for 30 seconds. I do all 10 of those 1/2 pound sub-batches, right after cracking the grain.
I still have to crank a machine, but the Shule is much easier to set up, take down, and clean, and once set, does not need adjusting for each use. It has only 3 discrete settings, not infinitely adjustsble.
So... because of the set-up, take-down, and clean procedures, (the Vitamix needs cleaning too), it does not make sense for me to mill for each bake.
I decided to do 5 pounds at a time, which lasts between 3 and 5 weeks.
4 pounds fits in a 1 gallon plastic bag; that bag goes in the fridge, and the other pound or so goes into the current bake, or a 1 qt bag.
And 4 or 5 weeks in the fridge for fresh-milled grain is acceptable... at least to me.
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Welcome to the home-milling club. In addition to SheGar, the home-milling users you want to follow are: ifs201, danni3ll3, pmccool, DanAyo, barryvabeach, MTloaf, SeasideJess, deblacksmith, dabrownman, UpsideDan -- and apologies to any I missed.
my husband wanted a mill that was proof against electrical outages, so he's the one who gets to set it up, mill the grain, clean it and break it down EVERY time we use it *LOL* and yes, undoing the adjustment is an extra bonus pain in the butt.
he's been moving the stones farther apart so he can sort of crack them with the stones. it seems to me that would work better with the stainless steel burs, but that would mean something extra to clean.
thanks for the info on refrigeration. i hadn't thought of that!
I've read where some people use two passes of the grain through the Wondermill Jr, one coarse and one fine, due to the large amount of strength/effort needed to grind fine flour in just one pass.
One of the stones on mine is slightly off center, you can tell just by looking that it is not perfectly centered. So I'm losing a bit of efficiency in that.
If you decide to use a large power drill to drive it, be sure to read up on the size that you need. I forget which web site, this one or the manufacturer, or a review on amazon, had good info. You need a real BIG drill, like a two handled job, with a large horse-power. Standard pistol-grip household drills can't handle the job. You need to lean your whole body against it to keep the drill bit adaptor from popping off.
my husband's first two attempts he tried to go from berry to flour, and it was physically grueling, but after reading on the board, i suggested he do two passes, and that's the flour we used for the bread. it was much easier.
i thought about getting a 1/2" drill for the times my husband wasn't around, but i can't see me using a heavy drill, much less wrestling the way you desribe. i thought about getting a lighter one and expecting it to burn out after a few uses, but that doesn't sound ideal, and will make the flour cost a lot more. and the drill will need to have an easy to use variable speed control, not just adjust the speed with the trigger, since the wonder jr only allows for... was it a max of 200 rpm or 300? either way, gotta have a way to adjust for that.
isn't grinding the flour with a drill very loud?
we're also considering just getting a motor and the attachment for it.
The shelf life of unmilled grains is measured in years! You don't have to freeze them. Just put them in a container bugs cannot get into and store in a cool, dry place. (I keep mine in well-sealed plastic bins in a walk-in pantry.)
A lot of the advantage of home-milling is the taste and nutrition benefits of using fresh-milled flour. I mill exactly what I need for a bake no more than a few hours in advance. Just before mixing the dough is ideal, but sometimes I do it the night before so I can get a faster start on mixing in the morning.
David
i already bought buckets and gamma lids from pleasant hill grains, but in summer there is no cool place in our condo - nothing is under 80 degrees, and if we use AC, it only cools a couple rooms. that's why i asked about freezing - or maybe refrigerating? but we have a chest freezer that's now almost empty while our fridge is full.
Lots of people freeze their grain before milling, either to kill any possible bugs in the grain, or to cool the grain down so the mill doesn't get too hot and damage the flour. If you've got loads of room in your chest freezer i think you can store your grain there. You can also store millled flour there. You'll want to adjust your water temperature to compensate. The buckets would be brittle and fragile if frozen. I'd recommend ziplock freezer bags instead, maybe double bagged.
I have a Mockmill 100 and love it. I highly recommend. You can keep your manual mill for backup when the power goes out. There are other good electric mills around as well and sometimes you can pick one up on Craigslist very cheap.
If you are ready to spend more money on kludges, why don't you just get a Mockmill? They are quieter. Less messy. Give you stone-ground flour, really finely ground, if you want and are quite reliable and inexpensive, depending on which model you get. Look into them.
The $100, $200 and $300 models differ mostly in speed of throughput. The least expensive one is a KitchenAid attachment. It works really well, unless you are milling very large amounts of flour at once.
(No affiliation, just a super satisfied user.)
David
i'm not eager to spend more money, but i have arthritis and torn rotator cuffs, so i can't use the wonder jr.
i was originally going to get a nutrimill, but the mockmill is winning me over. i assumed the kitchenaid attachment is pretty noisy, but it will take a lot less time, so probably not an issue for the neighbors if i mill 500 grams of flour.
i'd just buy a mockmill, but i have another bass on my "next to get" list. still, my birthday is next month... i'm off to pleasant hill to check out mockmills!
i'm back - the mockmill attachment is $200, not $100, only $70 less than the 100 model.
I noticed the prices are up. I'm guessing many folks on the forum bought at the introductory prices.
Can you exchange the Junior? For someone with a shoulder injury who wants to bake a few loaves a week, it seems like an electric mill really makes more sense. If you got the junior at Pleasant Hill they might work with you. They're super nice.
my husband is the one doing the grinding, but i'd like to be able to, also.
we didn't get the wonder jr through pleasant hill - over a month ago, they weren't going to be in stock till june. and we're outside our return period.
pleasant hill has been great for everything we've bought from them, though - and everyone i've talked to is super nice.