The mill is used to grind animal feed. You don't feed flour to animals, it is too dusty. Animals digest grain that is cracked better than they digest whole grain.

If you want a good selection of various types, check out the link below. Lehman's markets to traditional Amish and Mennonite communities. I have bought several items from them--great service and products. My own grain mill is an electric one, but if I had the $$$ I'd love to get a Diamant. The "Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book" recommended it highly. If you have or if you're going to be using a KitchenAid mixer to mix dough, they have a grain mill attachment for their mixers which I hear works pretty good for small quantities of grain. The Corora type mills are a great value for the dollar but you have to disassemble them for thorough cleaning, and it's an effort to grind enough flour for baking. If you want to make enough flour to bake your own bread it's certainly worth getting a good mill. And freshly ground corn meal makes the absolute best corn bread in the world. Here is a link that might be useful: grain mills from lehman's

We don't have the equipment to remove the bran and the germ from the wheat, leaving the endosperm for making "white" flour. You'd be amazed if you ever toured a flour mill. The processes the wheat goes through are impossible to duplicate at home. I've been in several modern mills and an 1880's water-powered mill not far from here. The best advise I can give on how NOT to make a 100% Whole Wheat "Brick" is to use a variety of wheat called hard WHITE (spring or winter) wheat (think of it as the albino of wheat). Wheat Montana's - Prairie Gold Spring Hard White Wheat is the best for bread that I've used. I also use Soft White Wheat for quick breads, pastry, cakes (it has less gluten than hard wheat varieties). I mill "cake" flour from 3-parts soft white wheat and 1-part oat groats. It's a low-gluten flour that can be used for angel food cakes and chiffon cakes. Too much gluten makes cake tough. All-purpose flour is a mixture of hard and soft wheat varieties. Pastry and cake flour is milled from soft wheat varieties. White wheat is like red wheat varieties in looks, as a plant, nutrition and fiber, and other attributes. It just doesn't have the genes necessary to make the bran "red". There are up to 3 genes that make the bran color. The original hard wheat - granddaddy of them all - Turkey Red Wheat - has 3 genes and the bran is very dark and the flour very acidic-tasting. Most of todays red wheat varieties only have one or two of those genes. Because white wheat has no genes for bran color, there are no strongly-flavored phenolic compounds that we associate with the bitter taste of whole wheat flour. The next thing is to incorporate an old-fashioned sponge technique (which takes more time), rather than the more modern Straight or Direct Method of making bread. I usually let the sponge set for 2-1/2 hours, or up to 12-hours (or anything in between). This helps to break down the bran and hydrate the gluten which improves the texture and flavor of the bread and helps it to rise higher. I also use a Zojirushi Bread Machine for making the dough. That has been shown to make whole wheat bread rise higher than by-hand OR a stand mixer in side-by-side tests done in King Arthur Flour test kitchens. Even sourdough breads are lighter because they included l-o-n-g rises, which does some of the same work as the sponge technique. In "Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon, she uses a soaked flour method that renders whole wheat bread nearly as light in color and texture as white bread. I've had problems with this method, but DO use a sponge with half the flour in my standard recipe, and my bread is as light and high-rising as any white bread. But it took the sponge method to get me off making light wheat bread (a portion of the flour unbleached flour as well as whole wheat) and into 100% Whole Wheat Bread. I haven't used bleached flour in a couple decades - I consider it next to poison. I no longer use commercial flour of any kind - only freshly-milled. When I ran out of commercial unbleached flour last winter, I didn't purchase anymore. I want 100% of the nutrition and fiber you can only get from freshly-milled flour. Much of the commercial whole wheat flour is nothing more than white flour with some of the bran raked back into it. Even those companies that use 100% of the grain, the germ oil goes rancid and the nutrients degrade rapidly after milling. Within 3 hours of milling the flour has begun to rapidly degrade. -Grainlady

1. Coarse flour equals coarse baked goods. Fine flour = fine baked goods. It's not that you can't use coarse flour for baking, but if you do you should expect different results than what you get with fine flour. In order to have a fine crumb for a Whole Wheat Angel Food Cake, or other delicate baked goods, you must have fine flour. You also need the right type of wheat - as well as the correct grind. Use soft wheat for baked goods where you don't need a lot of gluten development (pastry, cake, quick breads, some cookies, biscuits, etc.). I mill 3 parts soft white wheat with 1 part oats or spelt to make a low-gluten "cake" flour. If you already own the Ankarsrum attachment, run the grain through on a coarse setting (if it's adjustable), and then run the coarse flour through the mill on a fine setting and see if it's any finer than just one pass through the mill. This is a common "fix" for some mills, but it also entails more work/mess/time. It will also help prevent the motor from over-heating. Most of the mills used on the multi-task machines and stand mixers tend to NOT mill fine flour and also over-work the base motor, so keep to small amounts of flour at any one time, do the coarse setting first, then the fine setting. Allow the motor to cool between batches if you need to mill a lot of flour. 2. There is not a "perfect" mill, which is why I have a number of them. I also teach classes about home milling, so that's another reason I have a number of mills - for demonstration purposes. Do your homework so you are familiar with all the different types of mills and their milling characteristics - "stone" (which are actually any number of natural or composite materials which can chip, shred, crack and break - and if your grain is too moist for milling, stones will glaze over and you will need to remove and clean the stones); cone and burr mills (generally for coarse milling); as well as impact/micronizer mills (the newest and fastest method where the grain "explodes" into tiny particles as it passes through the fast-moving "teeth", rather than being pressed or ground between stones or burrs). 3. If your goal is to mill large amounts of grain into fine flour in a short amount of time, I'd suggest an impact/micronizer mill - a Nutrimill or Wonder Mill. The Nutrimill edges the Wonder Mill out only by a slight margin because you can load the Nutrimill before turning it on, it can be stopped even with the hopper full, and it has a "coarse" grind that the Wonder Mill can't duplicate. Even though they call it a "coarse" grind on the Nutrimill, it is actually a fine-grind for cornmeal. It's more like semolina in size (and what I used to mill durum wheat for a wholegrain semolina type product for making pasta). The texture of the baked cornbread using this so-called "coarse" grind on a Nutrimill will be more cake-like because it is so fine. You shouldn't stop the Wonder Mill in the middle of grinding (someone accidently unplugging it, or during a power outage) or you can clog the machine, and it needs to be ON when you load the hopper. Cautions: -I wear earplugs when using my electric mills due to noise. If you have children, I'd suggest they stay out of the room during milling to protect their ears. -Make sure the Nutrimill canister is pushed in properly (there are embossed words "YES" and "NO" on the base and the canister needs to be past "YES") or you will have flour everywhere. -Make sure the hose connecting the Wonder Mill and its canister is properly connected or you will have flour everywhere in your kitchen. -On the Nutrimill, I apply cornstarch to the rubber ring to keep it from sticking. I use a soft, natural-bristle pastry brush to remove the flour off the cover and the cup and brush it into the canister - so there is very little flour actually lost during milling or clean-up. I did the same with the Wondermill (which was known as the Whisper Mill when I owned it) and I also used a narrow bottle brush to clean the flour out of the connecting hose. -The electric mills can "walk" because of the vibration, and have been known to fall off counters, so keep an eye on it, or place it on a silicon mat (Silpat) to keep it from wandering and becoming yet one more victim for appliance "heaven". 4. If you watched the videos plllog linked to, I have owned or currently own all but the Wolfgang. If I could only keep one mill (which would be a very sad day indeed), I would keep the Wonder Mill Junior Deluxe (the hand mill) because of it's versatility. There is an adaptor for the Wonder Mill Junior Deluxe so you can power it with an electric drill if you need speed. I also have a Family Grain Mill with the motorized base, which is another good choice and also has a number of attachments you can purchase for it to expand it's use besides milling. 5. If you plan on doing any kind of coarse grinds or grits, you will want a hand mill for that - something that will adjust accordingly. I use a Corona Corn Mill for medium and coarse grinds of cornmeal, multi-grain/bean/seed mixtures, or hot cereal (Farina, Cream of Rice, Cream of Wheat, etc.), or will use my Family Grain Mill or Wonder Mill Junior Deluxe. When milling grain for cooked cereal (or cereal blends), be sure to sift out the flour or you will end up with glue in your cooked cereal. The same goes if you make cracked wheat or bulgur. 6. You can't mill small grains (teff, amaranth) in all mills, nor can you mill oily seeds (flax, poppy, etc.), so I have a Porkert Seed Mill for milling small seeds into flour. I can also use my coffee/spice mill, Wonder Mill Junior Deluxe, and Family Grain Mill. 7. If you would like to mill grain into flakes, that requires a flaker mill. I have a Marga Roller Grain Mill for flaking, and it will also grind a coarse grind of flour and coarse flakes, as well as crushing the entire seed into a flake, but can't be used for something hard like corn or beans. Flaking grain will shorten the cooking time. You can add a flaker mill attachment to the Family Grain Mill. 8. If you are considering hand mills, make sure you can easily store it and have something it can be attached to (either permanently or temporarily). You will also want to store it in a dry environment so nothing will rust. I have a grain cart I roll in and out of my pantry when I want to use it. I store my hand mills on the shelves, and they can attach (clamp) to the thick wood top. As to the infrared heat apparatus, I don't have any information to add. I use the "dancing drops of water" test on a griddle. -Grainlady