The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Grain mill grinder

latanante's picture
latanante

Grain mill grinder

Hi, 

I would like to get a non electric grinder but i dont have any references and no one to talk to. I live in northern canada (im sure i can order something online) but i dont know which one is good...Any suggestions?

 

Thanks! 

Our Crumb's picture
Our Crumb

The Diamant is possibly the Bentley of hand crank grain mills (see TFL posts by proth5 (Pat Roth)). 

The Grainmaker is also favored by discriminating and demanding hand grinders (see TFL posts by Pips (Phil Agnew)).

Neither is inexpensive and both are reportedly well engineered.

Good luck and have fun,

Tom

latanante's picture
latanante

Thank you for the suggestions... i will look in them 

 

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

I have a Wondermill Jr. and I love it. It comes with both stones and steel burrs, so you can grind nearly anything, including nuts and seeds for nut butters. It's very easy to assemble and disassemble for cleaning, and built like a tank. I mill all my specialty grains with it.

latanante's picture
latanante

May i assume you can do sprouted grains in it or grains and water at the same time? How labor intensive is it? Just reading some reviews. 

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

I do mill sprouted grains, but I dry them first. I haven't tried milling wet sprouted grain but I don't see why you couldn't. There is a website that tells you all the things you can and cannot grind with the Wondermill Jr. and there's not much that you can't!

It is fairly labour intensive, but that depends on what you are grinding. In order of easy to hard, this is my experience:

  1. soft white wheat - a pure pleasure to mill
  2. spelt - fairly easy to mill finely
  3. Most sprouted, dried grains, including different barley malts
  4. hard wheat, including Red Fife
  5. Hulless barley
  6. rye
  7. Kamut - this is awful; like milling gravel into sand. Much easier if sprouted and dried first!

I do a lot of baking (for sale), and mill all of the above. I only buy my bread flour and regular whole wheat, hand-milling everything else. It's a good workout!

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

that you hand milled everything! You must have an arm of steel!

latanante's picture
latanante

Thank you !