October 22, 2009 - 1:19pm
Heating of milled grain?
I am just starting with a Magicmill 3 grain mill. When I grind some flour, it comes out quite warm, more than I would have expected. I have read that one of the advantages of stone ground flour is that it doesn't get as damaged due to the lack of heating during milling. Need I be concerned with this at all? Does your mill heat the flour?
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and after reading about flour temperatures after milling here at TFL I started checking mine. My MMIII routinely turns out hard red winter wheat flour at roughly 118F when set on the finest setting. More coarse settings produce a slightly cooler flour, but I have not had any hard red winter wheat flour out of the mill below about 114F. Hard white is slightly cooler, and soft white is quite a bit cooler. I have read, but not tried, that freezing the kernels prior to milling significantly reduces the finished flour temperature. While it makes sense to me, I have not yet tested it so I can't tell you how much impact it has in practice.
I keep my flour in clasp-top glass jars on an upper cupboard shelf in the kitchen, where it can be quite warm from time to time. At the rate I mill and bake, though, it is never around for more than two weeks, and I have not ever had any go rancid. I mill about every other week, and I mill 3-4 pounds each of hard white and hard red grain each time. I tend to mill my soft white pastry flours as I need them.
I agree that the sooner you use it after milling, the better. Before I discovered sourdough pancakes I was making my pancakes out of baking powder, water, eggs, oil and fresh milled soft wheat pastry flour directly out of the mill. Mill it, cook it and eat it. MMMMMMmmm good.
OldWoodenSpoon
Ah, good.
I plan on milling as needed for the most part, so as long as the degradation isn't immediate, I should be fine. I've gathered that freshness is the whole point of home milling. I think that I will try that freezing idea also to see how that works.
Now, I just have to find a good source for grain by the sack.
Thanks for the input.
-Bob.
I discovered my Nutrimill (not a stone grinder) was really heating the flour when I milled in the warmer weather so I now put the wheat berries in a ziploc in the freezer for just about 1 hour right before I mill it. It really makes a big difference in the temperature of the freshly milled flour.I do about 8 cups at a time and use it within 2-3 weeks. I just store it in the kitchen cupboard and have never had a problem.