The Fresh Loaf

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Differences between KoMo XL and KoMo XL Plus

asder's picture
asder

Differences between KoMo XL and KoMo XL Plus

Greetings everyone

I was reading my previous two posts and how life changes without telling us. Back to the business at hand.

I got a nutrimill in my earlier days when i knew nothing about milling. Now that I have returned to my roots (living with parents, their choice), I have found that there is a very big market for Stone milled flour.

As a starter I was contemplating on getting KoMo XL Plus, as it is stated that it can work "commercially". I won't be making big batches. Mostly about 5kg in a go. For family, since everyone buys flour here, a batch of 20kg should be sufficient for a few weeks.

The questions that I have

1) Is there a difference in performance of KoMo XL and KoMo XL plus? If I am going to be using the mill for longer hours, is it better to hunt down a KoMo XL plus?

2) Does anyone have a good recommendation to a website that will ship the KoMo XL plus to Pakistan? I found Bakery Bits that has all my requirements met in one website. But they do not seem to offer a KoMo XL plus, they just have a "regular" KoMo XL.

3) I plan on setting up a micro bakery as a starting step to get things set up properly and if life treats the set up well, I can expand it, otherwise just keep on baking for friends and family. I was looking into using the Ankarsrum mixer (good previous experience) and getting all the basic supplies from them as well in one shipment. Is there any other website like bakerybits that ships to Pakistan that anyone is aware of? 

4) If in future I want to increase the size of the business and get a proper commercial scaled stone flour milling machine, which brands should I be looking at?

5) For a baking stone, people often mention they use a slab of granite rather than a pizza stone. If I go to the local stone quarry folks (very easy to find here), what kind of things should be I asking for, if i want to use a stone in my oven as a "pizza stone".

Just to give you an idea, if people like the flour I mill out, there will be about 5 households, each using about 10kg~20kg of flour every 2~4 weeks. 5 households at 20 kg flour each in 14 days = 100 kg flour in 14 days = roughly 7~8kg flour per day.

Once that becomes successful, after talking with our current commercial miller, he mills about 500kg~2000kg a day on what we call "Chinese Mills". They use steel burrs, get the flour out, but burn up quite a bit of it as well. Most people are fed up with that. When we go to our villages, they still use the old way. Tie a camel to the wheel and the camel turns the massive grinding wheels and we insert the grain berries in the middle and get the flour out. The taste is remarkably different compared to the "chinese mills".

I would appreciate any help, guidance, critique questions to help me better focus my efforts.

For now I just want to get back to milling my own flour and baking breads at home. All the future expansions will happen afterwards if things turn out well.