Can an electric or hand grain mill benefit you?
Fresh flour is the essential ingredient in great bread. The nutrients in flour begin to oxidize and degrade within hours of milling. You can insure optimal nutrition for yourself and your family by milling and promptly using your own fresh nutritious flour at home. Having your own grain mill makes this possible. Selecting the best grain mill requires matching your needs to the capabilities of the machine. Some grain mills have adjustments, others do not. Some mills grind other kinds of grains just fine, others do not. Understand the machine you are buying before making your purchase.
There are three types of grain mills to consider: Electric grain mills, Hand grain mills, and cereal mills.
Electric grain mills:
Mainlymixers.com offers four electric grain mills. The L’Equip Nutrimill grain mill has been the leading home flour mill on the market. It is adjustable to produce fine or coarser flour as desired. The L'Equip VitalMill grain mill is for the budget conscious user, grinding fine flour, but lacks a texture adjustment. The quality of the flour produced by the VitalMill has been compared to that of the original Magic Mill. Both models produce flour by rapidly turning milling teeth, called micronizing heads,that shatter the grains into finely ground flour. The WonderMill Grain Mill is an alternative to the L’Equip mills. It also uses steel teeth to grind and makes similar claims to adjustability and speed. There are however a couple of differences between the L’Equip and Wondermill. The L’Equip Nutrimill hopper holds 10 cups of grain, which makes 15 cups of flour. The Wondermill grinds 8 cups of grain at a time, making 12 cups of flour. The Wondermill or the L’Equip VitalMill must be started before grinding and cannot be stopped during grinding or they will plug. The L’Equip Nutrimill has a self cleaning grinding mechanism and the precracking element in the impact chamber allows you to load grain before you turn it on or allows you to turn it on and off during milling and yet not clog the mill. All electric grain mills are noisy. The Wondermill claims to be quieter than other models or earlier models, but they all make considerable noise. All of the electric grain mills work great for grinding non-oily grains, i.e., wheat, rye, pelt, millet, rice, corn, beans, quinoa, amaranth, and oats; but do not mill oily seeds, i.e. Chai or flax. The challenge with all electric mills is that it is harder than the hand mills or cereal mills to take them apart completely to clean, thus making the milling of oily seeds undesireable. There is one exception to this, it is the L'Equip Coffee Grinder - Seed Mill. This small, powerful, lightweight electric machine was designed to grind coffee beans, and therefore can handle the other oily seeds like flax, sesame, etc. It is a much smaller unit than the other grain mills, but also much less expensive. Generally, you do not need a large quantity of these other seed flours. Most recipes call for only a small quantity. However, this small machine would not be the machine of choice for grinding large quantities of wheat or the other hard grains.
Hand grain mills:
Mainlymixers.com offers the Wonder Junior Hand Grain Mill and the Jupiter Hand Grain Mill as a practical alternatives to electric grinding. The Wondermill Junior comes in two models, the Wonder Junior Deluxe Hand Grain Mill and the Wonder Junior Standard Hand Grain Mill. Both machines can produce super fine flour or coarse cracked grains. They are the same machine. The deluxe model comes with the stainless steel burr heads and the heavy duty clamp, the standard model does not. The burr heads and clamp can be purchased later as optional accessories for the standard model, where there is no need to do so with the deluxe. By simply swapping the stone heads for the stainless steel burr heads you can grind the oily grains, herbs and spices, soybeans, legumes, or nuts. The Jupiter Hand Grain Mill-Model 562 is also designed to handle the oily seeds. It is a very versitale hand grinder and very simple to assemble or disassemble for cleaning. Make with German engineering, it claims to be the easiest hand mill to turn and is adjustable to operate from fine pastry flour to coarse cereals. So if you want to make peanut butter or even grind fresh coffee consider a hand grinder. In all these applications you are assured to always have the perfect fresh nutritious ingredients for your family even if the power is out. The challenge with the hand mill is that it is muscle power, rather than electric power, so the grinding process is not as fast, nor easy, as with the electric grain mill.
Cereal Mills:
The Bosch cereal mills are attachments to the Bosch Kitchen Machines or Mixers. They grind coarser than the electric or hand grain mills (for cereal not fine flour) and do not have the capacity of the other machines. They are suitable for all kinds of dry grains, except field corn. They can grind some seeds, such as sesame or flax. The cereal grains must be completely dry before use. The difference in the two models offered is that the Bosch MUZ7GM1 cereal mill is designed to attach to the Universal Plus Kitchen Machine or the older Universal models. The Bosch MUZ4GM3 cereal mill is designed to attach to the older Concept Mixer series.
If you want to make lots of wheat bread or corn bread, purchase an electric grain mill. If you want to handle the more oily grains consider a hand mill or cereal mill. They can be more easily dissembled and cleaned after using the oily grains. The small electric L'Equip Coffee Grinder - Seed Mill is the electric alternative for the oily seeds or grains..
Please click the picture for each model described to view the features and assets described by their manufacturers.
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