Hey there everyone.  I'm wondering if anyone in the Northwest U.S. or Southwest Canada has any experience with flour from the Ellison Milling Company out of Lethbridge, Alberta.  If so, which of the flours have you tried, and can you make any comparisons to more 'mainstream' flours that I might know?  I've heard good things about their products, but not from people who make artisan type breads.  It'd be nice to hear some feedback before I buy a 50# bag of their stuff.  Thanks.

-Mark

http://TheBackHomeBakery.com

Got my Fidibus Medium mill the other day and got some wheat and rye grains.

This weekend I'm gonna bake my first loaf of home milled whole wheat. I think I will use a poolish preferment and see how she goes.

It only took 3 months! /rolleyes

Just ran a quart of hard white wheat through it, I'll do another quarter before I start using the flour.

It did let me establish that my finest seive is almost a perfect 85% extraction when I need 'white' flour.

I'm just getting started in milling my own grains and I wanted to be certain I know what I'm doing.  I've read some conflicting reports from all over the web and I have a few basic questions that I'm still unclear about. 

Any help is of course appreciated.

1. Is it recommended that I freeze my whole grains before using or storing?  How long should I do this?  I've read that a 48 hour freeze will kill the eggs of any critters that may be in there but I've also read that it's not much of an issue. 

2. What is the best grain storage solution?  Is it best to simply leave the grains in the freezer or in glass canisters or in food-safe buckets with gamma lids?  I've also read not to store my grains on a concrete floor and that I should put a few bay leafs in with the grain.  Obviously, I'm a bit confused here.

3. Should I sift my grains before milling?  Are stones and other seeds common enough to be a concern?  If so, what is the appropriate sized sifter and where can I find one?

4. Once I mill my grains is it recommended that I use the flour immediately as instinct suggests or, as I've read here and there, that I should wait for some period, aging the flour to some degree?  I've also read that some grains should be soaked before milling.  Another confusing issue.

5. Are there any other hints that the home miller should be made aware of?

I don't know if it is my enduring love of the classic Star Trek Episode (remember - the tribbles ate all the quadrotriticale) or longing for the wee great mountains and lochs of Scotland (one of my past "homes away from home") but lately I've been obsessed with triticale - the wheat/rye hybrid developed in Scotland.

 Now 90% of the time, I am all about the research - reading, questioning, and studying before I make a move.  Of course, there's that 10% of the time where I just jump in - and the triticale was definitely in the 10%.  And as our story unfolds, we can all see why I usually do research.

 I tempered the triticale and achieved a 13% moisture reading.  I then milled it as I would wheat to about 85% extraction.  It milled mostly like wheat - although to get good bran separation, I needed to mill finer than usual.  But I would have been able to easily mill a "near white" flour as I can with wheat.

 I then proceeded to mix up my usual high extraction formula (levain based, 12% of the flour pre-fermented, lean dough, 72% hydration) with the aim to "go by the numbers" and see how triticale would be different.

 First bump in the road - when I brought the dough together, I realized that I had a dough with the characteristics of high percentage rye dough.

 As I passed the time between my 20 "folds in the bowl" - I did what I should have done and looked up triticale.  It was first bred in the laboratory in 1875 by a Scottish biologist and now is mostly available as a second generation hybrid (2 types of triticale are crossed.)  It is an interesting grain in that it has the high yield of wheat with the range tolerance of rye.  This in itself is interesting as it has the potential to produce a useable grain outside the range of wheat.  It is supposed to combine the taste of wheat with the taste of rye, which might make it interesting for those bakers who like a little rye in most of their baked products.  There are some claims that it is incredibly "good for you" although I take those lightly.

 Of course, the downside is that the gluten content is low and it is considered less desirable for bread baking than wheat - but more so than rye.

 So with the dough in the bowl, I decided to treat it somewhat like a rye dough.  Fortunately the base was already a levain.  I continued to mix it 6 times with the "fold in the bowl" method (as I would for a whole wheat - but it never did get any significant gluten development) then shaped it and put it in a banneton moderately dusted with a rice flour/wheat flour blend.  I allowed it to proof for 1 hour 15 minutes and it did rise fairly nicely.  It did not seem particularly over proofed, but seemed fragile enough that I wanted to get it into the oven.  For the first time ever, I "cheated" (by my definition) by using parchment on the peel as I just felt that it would not survive the slightest roughness while loading.  After a feather soft landing on the peel - the dough flattened considerably.  No need to score, but I did lightly dock it.  I baked it in a receding oven starting at 500F with copious steam.

 The result?

 Well, I wouldn't call it good (I gotta be me...), but I wouldn't call it bad.  It had a wonderful wheaty aroma while baking and did have a small amount of oven spring, but I was expecting a rock.

 See below - It was really, really flat.  I put an egg cup in the shot to give an idea of how flat it was.

The crumb, however, although very fine was fairly light.  It was not really heavy. (See below.)

The taste was actually quite nice - like red whole wheat with just a hint of rye.  Just enough to add complexity, but not to overwhelm the wheat. I probably should have let it settle for a day - but given that this was not destined to be a truly fine bread - I felt it didn't matter.

 Now this isn't a question of "what went wrong with my bread?"  I know what went wrong.  I went off the deep end and used a grain that wasn't going to give me the best results.  But it didn't give me horrible results and the taste was quite nice.

 The question is really - how do we take this somewhat marginal grain and make a much better bread?

 My thoughts are as follows:

• Add wheat flour - this is the obvious one and one that I'd like to avoid for now.
• Bake it as enriched pan bread - I should not have so much trouble with collapse and spreading.
• Use commercial yeast to supplement the levain.  The oven spring with a levain is always somewhat less than with commercial yeast.  Oven spring may have made up a bit for the collapse.
• Any suggestions?

 So I call upon the collective wisdom of the TFLer's to come up with suggestions...  I'll certainly be willing to try them if they seem reasonable. This seems like a grain that just hasn't had the right marketing campaign...

 Happy Baking!

OK, so I'm not the sharpest tool in the box, but even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.  And although I am an engineer - I am not a mechanical engineer and I'm not 100% confident when I try to innovate - especially when it comes to my (beloved) Diamant Mill.

So I'm putting this out to you-all because it seems like many of you do have that mechanical thinking ability that I lack.

I was cranking the mill the other day when it occured to me that the table that I have the thing bolted to has, as its base, the working treadle mechanism from a treadle sewing machine (told you I wasn't the sharpest tool in the box - only took me a couple of years to notice that...)

Now, this would allow me to grind with leg power (I can treadle not by flexing my feet against the treadle but by putting one foot on the back of the treadle and one foot on the front - this gives considerable power when I am treadling my treadle sewing machine) (and come on - y'all could guess I use a treadle sewing machine, right?) which I'm thinking would be a good thing, but the conversion to treadle power would involve some heavy duty work, so I'd like to do a thought experiment before I drill holes, move the mill and damage an otherwise nice surface (which I am quite willing to do if the cause be good...)

Thing is, when using a treadle sewing machine, the flywheel of the treadle is much larger than the flywheel on the machine.  In the case of the Diamant - the mill's flywheel is 16 in in diameter and much heavier than the flywheel on the treadle mechanism which is only 12 in in diameter.  Am I kidding myself that even by using leg power I would be gaining an advantage? (I have vague memories of an unpleasant class many years ago where they made us do these calculations, but my memory stops there...) Am I setting myself up for bodily injury?

I would use a standard treadle drive band or two (and yes, they are easily found) - I guess - unless I got a better suggestion - but something tells me that alligning the mill's flywheel precisely with the treadle flywheel would be crucial.  How would I do this given that there is 2 inches of hard rock maple which I cannot see through between the two.  I'm speculating that I could do some calculation to get an approximate position for a couple of slots where the band would pass through and then allign the mill - by eye (?) so that the drive band was positioned correctly and then bolt my baby down.  Is there a better way?  Is there a way to test this out somehow?

So if any of you have thoughts, I'll be glad to hear them.

Thanks in advance.

I am fairly new here.  I have been baking for about 10 yrs on and off but got really serious about it about 1 yr ago.  I no longer buy any store bought bread, tortillas etc.  I love this site and have learned a great deal from all of you.  I hope someone can give me some imput here.  I know I read about this somewhere but can't find it.

I have finally used all my store bought whole wheat flour and am about to embark on the home milling quest.  I have a Nutrimill and a Country Living Mill.  My husband has not mounted my Country Living Mill so I will be using the Nutrimill this weekend.  To the point- what combination do you use of hard white to hard red wheat when you make wheat bread?  I am going to make Hamelman's Whole Wheat Multigrain and I need 1 lb of WW flour.  Ay suggestions?  Also, has anyone tried to use the wheat flour in the liquid-levain build instead of the bread flour in his formulas?  I am wondering if it would be useful to use the WW in it if you are using fresh ground flour.  I don't want to try more than one change this weekend since the bread is for my daughter's birthday party.  I think one new element at a time.  Any imput?

Hello from Arizona. I am a Poffertjes maker who is looking for a mill that is able to make something like 2000 lbs of premix flour (my recipe/specs) for me. Anyone know of a miller that can do this?

I've been grinding much of my own flour lately, but I have a question for the more experienced millers here.

Do you pick over the grain before you mill it? I've been carefully picking it over first to remove grains that still have the hull on them, small seeds of some unidentified type, stones, and the occasional piece of field corn. 14# of spelt produced a couple of tablespoons (at most) of this mixed detritus, so I'm wondering if I'd have even noticed if I'd just left it be.

I'm using a hand-crank mill made by Porkert. It produces a pretty coarse flour that works best when soaked overnight, but the price was right ($60.50). On the other hand, picking over adds a lot of time to a process that's already slow by nature; I have to run the flour through 3 times to get it to a fineness I can live with.

Thanks for any advice anyone cares to offer!

edh