#coronavirus – I bought a grain mill | Chronicles of a humpy dweller

In my defense, I was caught up in an enthusiastic conversation. I was talking to a friend about how flour is hard to access at the moment, she makes bread on a daily basis, and suggested that she should buy a grain mill. That conversation got me thinking about grinding grain, about how it can be achieved on a small scale, which led to researching grain milling options online. Yes…I slipped and bought a grain mill (so did she).

I actually bought a stand mixer with a grain grinding attachment (and a pasta press attachment), as I couldn’t buy a new, expensive machine that only does one thing. My thinking is that I can make wholewheat flour to make my bread (and maybe cakes) to get the extra nutrition from the whole grain. I may also have a go at making sprouted grain flour for breads and such.

I took a rare trip to town to pick up the parcel at the Post Office. I was very excited to get the boxes home and open them.

I opened all the boxes and laid it all out to inspect.

My first trial was a big batch of bread dough for the fridge. It was an easy project; I just put all the ingredients into the bowl and beat it to dough with the dough hook, the dough turned out smooth and beautiful. I did need to sprinkle more flour into the bowl as it worked to get the dough off the walls of the bowl, but it did not need much attention and took about 2 minutes.

My new mixer will now live on the counter and hopefully contribute to my enthusiasm for cooking (which is generally fairly low).

Now to see how the new toy does as a grain grinder…

I set up the grinder unit and dug out the 2 cups of wheat that I needed for the recipe. Then I poured the grain into the hopper (the thing on the top of the grinder) and turned it on; then I waited… and waited. It took maybe 5 minutes to grind the 2 cups of flour, but the flour that came out was fine and felt really silky. I had the grinder on the fine grind setting so that was the expected outcome, but you never know.

I used the flour to make some salted caramel biscuits. They are yummy, but I will have to cut down on the baking soon or I won’t be able to fit into my work clothes.