Current sources for corn to mill

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debunix on 4 Sep 2017 at 10:06

It's easy to find wheat berries of all sorts in bulk bins and bags for the home miller--hard red and soft white, and heirloom spelt, einkorn, kamut, emmer, and I can even get locally grown Sonora and Glenn and Red Fife wheats from my farmer's market.  But despite the amazing variety of corn available as seeds, popcorn, grits, cornmeal, hominy, chicos, etc, it is hard to find small quantities of whole dried corn kernels for milling into cornbread etc for the home baker.  It seems like a niche market waiting to be filled--especially since even a home blender can reduce whole kernels to a coarse grind suitable for many cornbread recipes.  My international grocery store carries Peruvian purple corn dried on the cob, but that's a pretty pricy and transport-intensive solution.

So....what are your current go-to online sources for whole grain corn kernels for milling?

So far, I’ve got

http://www.heartlandmill.com/
sells blue and yellow organic corn in as little as 10 lb lots

http://naturalwaymills.com/
their PDF price list shows organic yellow corn in 5 lb lots

Anyone else have good sources to add, especially for regional or heirloom varieties?

Good to have another source, and for smaller quantities, thanks! Since I posted I discovered that Los Chileros will sell unprocessed yellow and blue corn in addition to Hominy and chicos. I was preparing an order for chiles and asked them. It's not on the web site but it was about $1/lb plus a pretty solid shipping fee; I had to call to make my order. http://www.loschileros.com/
Probably what you're looking for is dent corn (also sometimes called field corn), Flour milled from dent corn is a high starch (the endosperm of the kernel is softer) and is probably best for most home uses such as corn bread or muffins, polenta and corn porridge. There is also flint corn which, as it's name suggests, has a harder kernel and would not be a good choice for the home miller, The problem with whole corn kernals in the USA is that you may not know if your corn is GMO. Over 95% of the corn grown in the USA is genetically modified. Popcorn is a distinct variety of corn and it is *not* genetically modified. As a dedicated home miller who is looking for non GMO corn that can be home milled to produce a variety of foods I have found popcorn to be my best resource. While organic popcorn is available in my local supermarkets I generally go with the less expensive non-organic popcorn. My grain mill (the Lee Household Flour Mill) allows me to adjust how fine the grain is milled. For polenta I go with a slightly gritty flour. For general purpose corn flour (for muffins, etc.) I mill somewhat finer. If you're looking for a reliable and available source of dried corn and don't live in a geographical area where other varieties of dried corn are available at reasonable prices, I do recommend whole popcorn to my fellow millers.
I've resorted to popcorn in the past, but have never done a true taste or texture test to compare it to dent or flint corn. I've just assumed that since it was not bred for milling, it would likely not be as good. Have you ever done a side-by-side test between popcorn and dent corn(s)? Maybe I need to do my own test....at the moment, I have several varieties of popcorn and dent corn and hominy corn and purple inca corn....but who will help me eat all the corn muffins? Hmmm....

Something I recently posted at Homegrown Goodness:

In my opinion, coarse porridge is the highest expression of maize food.  The original question relates to popcorn's being the only dry maize readily available in the marketplace.

 

I've now had porridge from two flints, Garland and Floriani, various dents, and grocery-store yellow popcorn.  All were sifted to a granulation that passed a #8 sieve and rode on a #20. 

 

The popcorn had less flavor than the flints, but it was still good.  Perhaps a named OP variety would taste better than a generic popcorn.

 

The popcorn was very hard to grind on a CS Bell #2, even though most of it slipped through uncracked.   I ground the rest on a Retsel Mil-Rite, using a wide setting of the steel burrs, with multiple passes and sievings.  Retsel says that popcorn voids the warranty.  The impact mills that can handle popcorn would likely not leave it coarse enough for me, but that might be a good solution for those who like a smooth polenta.

 

I am normally a whole-grain person, but coarse corn chaff in grits ruins it.  I typically remove floating chaff with a cup-sized sieve.  Unlike the other corns, the popcorn chaff unexpectedly sank.  I had to winnow the ground popcorn. 

 

On the plus side, the deep yellow of the popcorn indicates a probable high level of xanthophylls.

 

In summary, ordinary popcorn isn't worth it with my mills.  In years of my crop failure, I will have to spend big bucks for quality dents and the extremely rare flint.