Showing posts with label flour mill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flour mill. Show all posts

Monday, September 2, 2013

My New-to-Me Wheat Mill

My friend gave me her Magic Mill.










These don't appear to be manufactured any more, but at one time they were the wheat mill of choice for people who ground their own flour. My friend bought hers in the 1970's. So did my parents. My oldest sister had one. I knew a lot other people who owned them, too.

My K-Tec Kitchen Mill next to the Magic Mill:


The size difference is obvious! Believe me, there is a corresponding weight difference as well. I don't mind moving the Kitchen Mill from its home to the counter to use it. The Magic Mill is too big to live on the counter where it is used, but too heavy to lug around easily.

I will put up with its inconveniences for its benefits.

The Magic Mill is a stone grinder. Here you can see the stones. The wheat feeds into the hole and then is ground between the stones.


The metal plate that fits over the stones makes it a lot easier to feed the grain into the hole!






Here's the pan that slides into the bottom drawer to collect the flour:





It's really easy to collect the flour and then go on with more milling. With the Kitchen Mill, I have to brush off all of the surfaces after each batch of flour. With the Magic Mill, I can wait until I'm completely finished milling before brushing everything off.

The Magic Mill doesn't mill flour quite as fine as the Kitchen Mill does.





But it has a wider milling range, so it can crack wheat. Up until now, I've just been using my hand mill to crack wheat.





If I had to choose one over the other, which would I choose? I'm not sure.

If you are interested in learning about grain mills, Pleasant Hill Grain is a good place to start. We (my former husband and I have joint custody of the Kitchen Mill) bought the Kitchen Mill in the early 1980's. Pleasant Hill Grain doesn't sell it, but you can go to Harvest Essentials to learn about the current version. (Other than the addition of Blendtec in its name, I can't see any difference.)

Here's my dream mill!


Thursday, November 8, 2012

Cold? Crack Wheat!

I was cold.

After a few minutes of cracking wheat ...

Now I'm not!

Monday, October 8, 2012

Cracked Wheat Bread--Updated

Today I'm going to bake Cracked Wheat Bread using my Aunt Betty's recipe. Just thinking about it brings back a flood of happy memories from my childhood. She was--and is--a great cook, among her many other talents and abilities. I spent lots of time at her any my Uncle Frosty's farm while growing up, and it always involved home-made bread which was likely to be Cracked Wheat Bread.

My electric grain mill doesn't grind coarsely enough for cracked wheat, so I use my hand mill. It does a good job. I've made whole wheat bread using this mill to grind all of the flour. It's a little time-consuming and the flour is not quite as fine as the flour milled in my electric one, but it's fine enough. In fact, I have a friend who, when her husband was a medical resident, used this same model hand mill to grind all of her flour for baking bread. She did have a couple of boys who helped her.
My hand mill

Whole-grain wheat and cracked wheat

I'm baking Cracked Wheat Bread in this Friday's baking. So, if you are interested in ordering some, e-mail me at ksimmonsd@gmail.com and I will send you an order sheet.

I'm also baking White Whole Wheat Bread made with 100% white whole wheat flour this Friday.

I'll update this post after the bread is baked!

The Cracked Wheat Bread is baked, and it looks and taste great!