There is no ONE perfect mill, but I'd recommend an electric impact mill - especially a Nutrimill. It does a large variety of grains/seeds/beans (even large things like fava beans and garbanzo) and you can mill a fine-grind of cornmeal. I use a Corona Corn Mill for coarse grains and cornmeal (hand mill).

I've had another impact mill for eons - a Whisper Mill (it now goes by the name Wonder Mill), and it's been getting a workout up to 3 times a week for many, many years. It does an excellent job, but there are some features on the Nutrimill that are better. The Wonder Mill will ONLY mill flour.

These two impact mills are relatively small, self-cleaning, mill flour quickly, and the most important feature, they mill fine flour on the first pass. If all you get is coarse flour, you'll only get coarse bread. You can only make cake if you have a fine flour - PERIOD. So take into consideration all your baking needs, not just bread. You'll have more useable gluten with fine flour when using high-protein wheat (Wheat Montana's Prairie Gold Hard Spring White Wheat is my favorite for bread). With many of the mills you have to run the grain through and then pass the flour through again to get it fairly fine.

These 2 impact mills will not do the small grains/seeds. I have a small seed mill for things like teff, amaranth, sesame, poppy seeds, etc. I mill flax in a coffee/spice mill. Flakes, coarse flour/farina are done on a Marga Flaker Mill.

I have a Family Grain Mill as my back-up mill. It's a hand mill, but I have an electric motor for it as well. You can get a variety of additional attachments for the Family Grain Mill, such as a flaker. You need to pass the flour back through, but it does a pretty good job. I wanted a good hand mill should we be without electricity (like 10-days during that December ice storm)...

-Grainlady

I was looking at the Nutrimill (I read some of your other posts in the archives). However, I had not seen the mill mentioned for the KitchenAid Artisan mixer?

Do you (or anyone else) have an opinion or thoughts on this option since I already have the mixer?

Thanks for your wonderful post! (I wanted to move in like someone else mentioned in another post, hehehe. I was rejected before I got to ask!)

Thanks again!

Based on the reviews on Amazon it looks like you would do better getting a stand alone mill. I covet one of these as well. It seems like the next logical step top making our own bread.

-Robin

Here is a link that might be useful: Reviews of the Grain Mill Attachment at Amazon

I understand from information I've gathered from the Internet, not from any personal experience, that the mill attachment for the Kitchen Aid does not mill flour nearly as fine as an impact mill. Fineness of the flour is absolutely essential to good baking.

It's milled with burrs in a Kitchen Aid, and burrs are never as fine as an impact mill. Burrs also easily glaze over if the grain happens to be moist. Just because grain seems dry, there is still a good percentage of moisture remaining in it.

Impact mills have NOTHING grinding together. The wheat is caught between the stainless steel teeth that pass only a tiny fraction of a space apart (but never touch) and literally explode into fine particles.

I also understand the Kitchen Aid mill gets very hot after about 10 cups of wheat and then you have to wait 45 minutes before you can use it again. That's a red flag against the Kitchen Aid mill in my book. Ten cups would never be a problem with the Nutrimill or the Wondermill. Although 10 cups of wheat IS quite a bit, it's not an uncommon amount to mill. I usually mill 6 - 10 cups on a regular basis. I may also mill wheat, spelt, and rye (or triticale) to equal much more than 10 cups of grain on a regular basis. If I make noodles or pasta, then add a few cups of durum wheat.

1# = 3 cups of wheat = 4 c. flour

White wheat actually has a little higher extraction rate than red wheat, so you get a bit more flour from the same amount of white wheat as you would from red wheat varieties. WHY? I'm not sure. It's just one of those little grain factoids I have tucked away.

It's advised to mill what you need as you need it. I usually mill more than what I need for bread and I'll freeze any extra and use it before the week is out. Bread isn't the only thing I use flour for. We don't purchase commercially prepared breads or baked goods, so if we eat it, I've made it as well. I like to do most of my milling for the week on Monday morning and only have the mill out once.

My "regular" 100% Whole Wheat Bread recipe uses 4-3/4 to 5-cups flour for 2-pounds of dough. I use my Zojirushi bread machine to make the dough. From 2# of dough I get one 1-pound pullman pan of bread, or 3 small loaves. From 1# of dough I get 6 jumbo cinnamon or pecan rolls (made in a jumbo muffin tin), or an 8-inch pan of dinner rolls, 6 hamburger buns or 6 hot dog buns. So I get a lot of things out of 2# of dough.

-Grainlady

Grainlady, this may seem like a dumb question, but as neither I nor anyone I know mills flour, I have no way of knowing. Can you mill your own white flour? I don't mean the color, as I know the store bought is bleached somehow, I mean, any time I've tried making bread using only whole wheat flour, it is just too heavy. I always must cut it with white to make a decent loaf.

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

I have a very basic electric mill, but I'm lusting after the Nutrimill.

If you get the misguided idea that you want a manual mill, check out the link. (Just kidding, but don't underestimate the amount of manual labor it takes to mill even a moderate amount of flour.)

Here is a link that might be useful: grain mill

I would second either the Whisper mill or nutrimill. I have been grinding my own wheat for years, and have the Magic Mill (now Nutrimill) and have had great results for almost 10 years. My sil has the Whisper Mill and has also been pleased.
There is nothing better than bread made with your own freshly ground wheat. I had gotten out of the habit of making bread every week and decided to mix up 8 loves on Saturday. My 10 year old son just asked me today for lunch..."mom, can I have a ham sandwich on our good bread - that you made..not the other stuff." Warmed my heart to know that it made the difference.
I also have a Kitchen Aid but have passed on the grain grinder for the very reason stated above...the motor will burn out quickly if you want to do long term, large amounts of milling.
blessings on the journey,
Jen

Here is a link that might be useful: Easy family dinners with Homemade Gourmet

"Within 3 hours of milling the flour has begun to rapidly degrade." Oh my gosh Grainlady! I have whole wheat flour in the freezer which I have been using. I could not detect rancidity but are we fooling ourselves? Maybe it's not really whole wheat? I was intending to use up my stored flour before getting into grain grinding and even then, really think about how much I want to do that. it's just the two of us and not big bread eaters. Well, it's best when fresh and hot so I do have a lot of waste unless I freeze.

terrapots -

It's a little known fact, rancid oil doesn't have to smell rancid to be rancid. If it smells rancid, then it's been that way for quite awhile. Natural oils of seeds/grains begin to go rancid once the protective bran is opened and oxygen begins to oxidize the oil. Oxidized oils are free radicals and damage the body. The natural antioxidants in the grain will only protect the oil for a short time.

Most commercial whole wheat flour (other than KA, Hodson Mill, and Arrowhead Mill, I believe, and some little speciality mills) are nothing more than white flour with bran raked back into it to make it "brown". In some places the wheat germ (the most nutritious part) must be removed, by law, to prevent the flour from rapidly going rancid and to give it a longer shelf-life from a warehouse point of view.

Since you have stored your whole wheat flour in the freezer, that delays the degeneration of the nutrients and oil; but it doesn't prevent it. That's why I store any freshly-milled flour I have leftover in the freezer and use it before the week is out. It's perfectly safe to use even after months in the freezer, it's just no longer rich in the nutrients that it has those first 3 hours after being milled, and that's why I mill flour to begin with - the superior nutrition and fiber. It's too bad we can't see nutrition, because it certainly affects our health.

The other problem with commercial whole wheat flour is that (for nearly all brands) it is neither refrigerated or frozen from the time it's milled until it's sold; so that assures a degraded product when you bring it home from the store. The oil has already oxidized.

One article in my file says, "Once milled, flour can become rancid in a relatively short amount of time, since the vegetable oils are released. Some studies have shown that vitamin loss begins as quickly as 3 hours after milling. Flours that have been left on the shelf for many months have lost portions of their B complex and C Vitamins."

It doesn't take much research to link fatal disease to the food we eat. Using whole grains is just one simple change that could benefit most people. Do I think we are kidding ourselves using commercial whole wheat flour? YOU BET I DO!

There's only two of us at home and we normally consume one 1-pound loaf of bread per week. We consume other wholegrain products besides bread and those cover 4 servings of bread/cereal each day. But I also use freshly milled flour in all the other baked goods we consume. I mill my own cornmeal. Once again, so that I get 100% of the nutrition. De-germed corn is little more than dead food in my opinion. I mill durum wheat for homemade pasta and noodles. I make my own bulgur from whole wheat grain. I mill my own flakes. All for the nutrition of it!

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Health Benefits of Whole Grains

grainlady,
wow do you know your stuff. I am a newbie. I have a kitchenaid and was thinking of trying to get the grain attachment. I think I'll just wait and save my pennies. The whisper mill sounds good. It was advertised and praised on the Breadbeckers website. Lots of good stuff here. Thanks .

Here is a link that might be useful: myspace

I have the Family Grain Mill and love it. It does take a second time through to get it as fine as store bought but it does a fine job of cracking and corse ground just about anything you care to put through.If I need regular flour I just as soon buy King Arthur. The flaker attachment and other attachments make it far more useful than just a grain mill.They do have a Kitchen Aid adapter but I use mine as a stand alone so as not to put too much stress on my mixer.I did buy the grain attachment for the KA and it is as solid as a rock but returned it and got the Family Mill. If you google Family Grain Mill you can see for yourself.Have a great day!!!!!!
Matt