Hello Everyone!

My name is Andrew.

Livng in the UK,  Yorkshire to be precise.  East yorkshire to be evan more precise

I am a trained, time served Baker.   I had the good fortune to cut my bakery teeth in the scratch,  craft sector.  Not many of us left and I am so pleased I went down this route early on.  Not many people are any good at hand molding these days  ! 

I Stopped being a baker a few years ago,  went into further education,  as?  A Bakery Lecturer of course!  Then due  to  redundancy was gently forced into being a chef for a living.  I now do agency cooking and supply teacherwork in Food Tech.

I have yeasty blood however,  cant stay away from bread!  I am very Pro traditional British baking.  I think it is very underrated and love to talk about and demonstrate its virtues.

I absolutely love challenges, so anyone who has a bread quandry, please, please contact me

Hope to hear from you all soon.

Andrew  S.

I know there are a number of excellent mills for different applications, so I hope I get this detailed enough to really pinpoint which will work best for me. Thanks in advance for your advice!

I'm looking for a mill that can accomplish the following;

can mill coarse or very fine flours (dry grains) for baking, pasta, hot cereal, pastries, gravies, cakes, breads, etc.

does not heat the flour (over 120 farenheit)

can sift the milled flour to make white cake flours (meaning that it's capable of not crushing the outer layer into the flour making it too difficult to sift out to get a white flour)

can mill for a large family (meaning does not heat up or mess up with heavy use)

does not need to be cleaned

does not throw flour dust everywhere

has electrical and hand mill capability

lasts for 30 years+

does not need to be babysat (won't catch on fire or break with a distracted operator)

does not have quarks with getting odd sized or shaped grains stuck and cracks, or constantly needing to be taken apart to fix

low maintenance

less than $1000

can be purchased in or shipped to the U.S. without incredible waits, fees, or bribes, and with the knowledge that defective or damaged products will be fully replaced in a timely manner without uneccesary inconvenience

Any thoughts?

I have been wondering about the Wonder Junior hand mill. Any thoughts from all of you?

http://www.aviva.ca/shop/products.asp?itemid=6394&catid=96

Thanks Mur

Well, now that I've committed myself to artisan bread, I need to move up from making only two loaves at a time. I have a wood-fired oven that I only fire once a week, so I'd like to increase the load to make better use of the heat/oven space. My thought is to try to make a dough using 5# of flour + starter. That should make about 6 or 7 loaves, I guess.

My problem is that my KA can hardly handle the 1-1/2# batches I'm presently making. Other than drop another $500 on a new mixing appliance, my only option is to go manual. Which I've never really done before, except to finish up what the mixer already mostly accomplished.

So, how do I do this? I took a look recently at the Julia Child video site -- the video about making baguettes -- where the chef (can't remember her name) says you throw and turn the dough 800(!!) times. At 5+ pounds, that's a lot of throwing! (Kinda like tossing 2 tons of 5# rocks.) Besides, my wife would probably kill me after all that banging of dough on the counter. And I can't say I'd blame her.

Anyone out there hand knead this size dough? What's the technique? How long should I expect the process to take? If it makes a difference, I'm working with naturally leavened dough.

ClimbHi