July 20, 2016 - 8:36am
Vitamix Dry Blade for Milling?
I'm relatively new to bread baking and brand new to this forum. I'm trying to decide if I need a flour mill or if my Vitamix using a dry blade container will suffice.
Some personal history: My wife and I spend 6 to 8 months a year in a 29' Airstream, less than 200 sf of living space. Storage space is at a premium. Four years ago we became vegan so our Vitamix is something we use almost daily. Adding a flour mill would definitely require additional storage we don't have, thus my dilemma. I'd love to hear from anyone whose familiar with the Vitamix and has used it to mill flour.
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Hello, I am new to using my vitamin dry blade as well but so far I have found it works pretty well. You can only "mill" smaller amounts at a time (I believe less than 2 cups grain) and I think the grind is a little less find than my WonderMill typically produces (although I suppose I could blend longer) but I wouldn't say that's a deal breaker, it just takes a bit longer. I enjoy grinding corn for cornmeal in it as well, it is nice to have more control over getting a slightly more course grind. Since I own a mill I tend to opt to use that since it makes quick work of a large amount of grain but if I was short on space I think the Vitamix would work fine without detriment to my bread. I will warn that my mill makes more mess than using the Vitamix... I always seem to end up with a cloud of flour dust covering surrounding aurfaces, despite my best efforts to avoid it. Good luck on joining the bread baking path....I am new to it too but I am hooked and can never go back to store bought bread again. And milling your own flour makes a world of difference when cooking with whole grains, both in terms of flavor and health.
Hi! If you already have the dry blade container, then just try it :) Freeze the wheat berries first, run it for about 60-90 seconds, then sift. I've had great results:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/352947#comment-352947
A friend of mine has an electric flour mill from retsel, he is going to let me borrow it when we meet in late August. His comments thus far, "No matter how fine I grind with it, still coarser than store bought". Which sounds similar to vitamix results. I'm thinking the flour coarseness isn't THAT big a deal when making flour.
Anyway, I plan on testing both to see what the end product is like.
Thanks for the feed back. I do have the dry blade container all ready. Sounds like I just need to do this. :-)
I used my dry blade container for probably a year or two before I finally broke down and bought an electric grain mill ( a Komo). The main issue I had with the dry blade container is that because the grain stays in the container instead of flowing out once milled it's hard to mill evenly at anything other than fine. When I wanted chops for example I couldn't get it all to the same texture, some was coarser some was finer. On the other hand the dry container is great for things like oily seeds that I can't put in my Komo.
Additionally, I found the dry blade container could not grind corn evenly to the texture I wanted.
Yes, I assumed that would be the case. I've ordered some hard red and spelt berries, can't wait to try it.
Well, I'm quite pleased with how well the Vitamix did. I used the dry blade container. I added one cup of berries at a time, which I had placed in the freezer well before hand. When grinding I cycled smoothly from 1 to 10 and then to High and ran it for 1 minute from that point. I poured the flour into a #40 sifter to check it's consistency and except for a few of the hard red berries not being fully ground (and I mean like 4 or 5) it really did a nice job. I left the bran in the flour as I like the fiber it provides. I think I'll make a loaf by combining the hard red and spelt flour.
Just wanted to report in and say thanks, again.