The Miller's Tale

I wrote previously that I had gotten a grain mill.  This is an update, and I have to say, so far, so good.

 After a fair amount of browsing, I decided on a Nutrimill. 

I also ordered some hard red  wheat along with the mill, to mill in it.  Since then I have gotten some rye berries, some spelt, and some hard white wheat, though I have not milled all of them yet.  For the most part, I have only milled the red wheat, I have bags of white whole wheat to use up before I get to that.  

The mill works great.  it takes this

and turns it into this.

It does not get much flour around, perhaps a very light dusting on the counter, but I make a much bigger mess baking.  For whole wheat, I try to mill a weeks worth, for other ingredients, I mill just about what I need for the dough I am making, by weight. 

Since the Nutrimill is an impact mill, I am careful to look through my grain for any little bits of stuff that would jam up my mill, just like sorting dried beans.   I use a sorting tray I got to sort screws and bolts and such, and it works great.

I have taken to weighing my ingredients, and developed a Bread Weight Conversion spreadsheet to help make the conversions.  Feel free to download it.  I use the same amount of milled flour, by weight, as I would bagged flour. It may be my imagination, but when I first mix it, it seems a bit wetter, but as it sits the flour seems to hydrate and it ends up fine.  

In my first foray beyond basic whole wheat flour, I milled some rye, to make the HB in 5 Whole Grain Rye (page 113 et seq).  I have made this bread before, and I like it a lot.  It was even better with my own milled flour.  I first made some English muffins (see how I do English Muffins) because I like them and I can freeze them for breakfasts.   

 Then, because I wanted to make sandwiches, I made sort of a cross between a foccacia and a weck roll.  Larger than a bun, spritzed with olive oil, and topped with salt and caraway seeds.   They were great. 

So, as I said at the beginning, my milling is so far, so good.  I will let you know how things go from time to time.