grinders and blenders
Hi:
I've looked into milling my own wheat for a while just for fun home purposes, this sort of "do it myself" attitude is predominant in all my hobbies.
Google searching results really in only reviews of the basic home machines, like the nutri or wonder mills, some of the hand cranked ones, etc. Here and there I see a little note about using something like a vitamix or blendtec. So a few questions where I'm not finding much:
- How crucial is the grind/mill consistency to dough/baked product?
- Are there comparisons of end product from blender vs. grain mill?
- Anyone gone crazy and tried a more substantial grain mill, like from mahlkoenig or ditting?
All these stem from my dysfunctional coffee hobby, where I'm roasting my own beans, have a wide variety of various grinders and brewing apparatuses. Grind is crucial in some brew methods, hence #1. So I'm simply wondering how much it matters with wheat, for example, once you get to the finer grind stages.
Second is sort of an extension of the first, in that, does it really matter, since the dough ends up sort of bonding together at the end?
And third, well, a, uhm.. "friend" got an ek43 (don't judge!! heehee) sitting in a garage, and I'm, I mean he is trying to determine whether to make it grind grains/wheat or coffee. Both really isn't a good idea due to particles and cleaning etc. Perhaps he should've splurged on the dual headed version.
Thanks for reading, enjoy the weekend!
First of all grinding your own flour is fun especially for people that like to do it themselves. I've only had experience with three types, a vitamix, a micronizer type and a KoMo stone grinder. The vitamix works but you do get variation in grind particles and it heats the flour pretty hot. The micronizer had more consistent grind but was noisy, also heated the flour and was hard to clean. My go to is the stone grinder it does the best job in all categories.
I was not familiar with the ek43 but did a quick search. It is basically a burr mill a type that does a good job of grinding. I would suggest to your "friend" that as long as he doesn't have to clean it every day why nor try it and see how it works. Plus it has a lot of easy adjustments that would be fun to play with.
Usually when a person starts grinding their own flour it does become an obsession. Good luck and have fun.
Thank you! Turns out I wasn't searching exactly the right way, but fixing up the search terms has resulted in a lot of info on comparisons. I'll be trying to grind with the vitamix at first, just to evaluate whether I like the taste, then move on from there. Freeze the grains, sift, etc.
I suspect the ek43 might spin too fast and so heat the grain too much. I will, uh, recommend, yeah, recommend, it remain dedicated to coffee. :) The burrs in it are specific for coffee, anyway, not a good idea.
Thanks again!
I bought one of the red ones from the market, I don't know if it was winter or spring. Put in freezer, the ground with the vitamix dry container. Sifting didn't do anything.
Without any further reading or research, I just dove in with my goto recipe (David's San Joaquin sourdough), and the entire flour except the levain was my own ground wheat.
Talk about beginner's luck :D Taste was slightly bitter, but the aroma, my goodness. I'm doing everything I can to keep myself from the rabbit hole of grinders now *whimper*
Boule in front is the subject home milled WW, pay no attention to the back two.
Wow, the oven spring is fantastic for home milled whole wheat.
Sadly, it was total beginner's luck, from two standpoints: you see those two breads behind the one? They were standard san joaquin recipe, but insides ended up totally dense with a few massive holes. First time that's ever happened.
Then second: I read up more on home-milled flour, and read a longer autolyse would help tame bitterness. I make homemade soba noodles from buckwheat, so approached the second loaf the same way: 1:1 water/flour overnight autolyse on the counter, starting with boiling water. That was a mistake. I got no gluten development at all, just a blob of wheat porridge moment the boiling water hit. Decided to go through with it anyway. Bread turned out flat and hard as a rock, hahaha. Smelled good in the oven, taste was bad :)
Will try again. #3 will likely be another variety of wheat they sell at the store, then #4 a mix of the two, and #5 try to see if I can replicate the success of #1 again. I also want to explore the sprouted grains. Although the order should probably be turned around...
which san joaquin recipe did you use, he has a number of variations, and I looked but did not see a 100 percent whole wheat. BTW, i have read about bitterness, but once I switched to just whole wheat years ago ( either all red, or all www, or sometimes a mix ) I don't notice any bitterness anymore, even with all red spring wheat, and plain white flour is the one that tastes odd.
Sounds like the bitterness may be either an acquired taste, or a taste that becomes desensitized. Will play with the other wheats! Fun!
General gist: 500g flour, 350-360g water, 100g 1:1 saturated levain, and 10g salt (I use 12-13g for my taste). The original breaks the 500g portion into 450g apf, 25g rye, 25g ww. I only did half the recipe for my lucky home-vitamixed. Therefore: 250g whole milled, 180g water, 50g levain (1:1, with 25% rye, 75% apf), 6g salt. Based on everything I've researched, this shouldn't have worked, so it was a fluke and I got lucky!!