Good afternoon All,
After several years of mixing by hands my sourdough dough, thanks to your help, I bought the Ankarsrum mixer about a year ago, as my first dough mixer.
I was offered by a bakery, some 2kg of Rye flour, milled in front of me... I followed my usual recipe and the bread had such a different taste, sort of more sweet, and so flavourful.
I decided to buy a mill. Knowing that I bake about 1kg of dough per week (loaf, baguette, sandwich), and my kitchen is super small, I was wondering if I could start with the Ankarsrum Grain mill... I read the few reviews on the web, the reviews are very mixed, some love it, some are even saying you can mill fine enough for bread making.
I use mainly Rye, Wholewheat, and white flour currently. I add some seeds like pumpkin, sunflower...
Do you guys have ever used it? Is it worth it for GBP100? Will the flour be fine enough for my amateur sourdough bread making?
Thank you so much for your help guys
Just in case here the link to the Ankarsrum accessories
Arno, I think a year down the road (after purchasing) you would be happier with a Mockmill 100. It is a little more money and another appliance to store, but I don’t think you would regret your decision.
I use a KoMo Fidibus, but many report excellent results with the Mockmill.
HTH
Danny
Thanks, Dan for your answer.
In the UK the price difference is significant here, GBP240 Vs GBP100.
But I know you may be right in the long run...
Dear Arno,
I have an Anskarum Grain Mill along with a Nutramill. I use the Anskarum for grinding coarse grain when I make Horst Bandel Pumpernickel Bread. The Anskarum is really good for that but if I want a fine grain I have to put it through a couple of times. It is a small attachment and would probably work in the kitchen you describe rather than investing in a single purpose mill. It make take you a bit more time but should do the job.
Happy Baking,
Big Crusty
Hi BigCrust,
my purpose would be to mill wheat, rye and may be Einkorn grains to make sourdough bread.
I would like to try to have the similar granularity than a flour bought in a store. I wish Similar granularity because I don’t know better... may be more coarse would also work for bread making?
According to what you are saying, the Ank mill will not do a good job right?
Or I would need to pass the flour into it several times to get the right fine four?
I am right to resume your thoughts by saying that it is good but not good enough to mill grain into flour?
Arno, you will be hard pressed to find a home mill that will duplicate commercial flours. But you can get close enough...
I see you point.
The Mock 100 that was recommended would be close enough to bake bread, I would assumed?
Would the Ank grain mill would also work to get flour to bake bread?
Although I own an Ankarsrum, I have no experience using an Ankarsrum Grain Mill.
There are a number of whole-grain bread recipes that call for a coarse milled flour. If you want to continue to also use white bread flour in your recipes, the Ankarsrum mill might be fine for you as a way to just add supplemental whole grain. But if you want to really get into whole grain baking, and use your own flour for most of your baking, you will probably want a grain mill that can really do the job. Also, that attachment looks pretty bulky. I don't know that you're really saving that much storage space by getting it.
In the end, only you can decide. But if I were you I would keep an eye out for a good used mill or a sale on the Mockmill, rather than getting a tool that only works for half of the jobs. My Mockmill takes up less space on my counter than my coffee maker and gets almost as much use.
Morning SeasideJess,
I wish to continue what I do now, 100% rye bread, 50% Wholewheat 50% White, some 100% Wholewheat, Some 70% Einkorn 30% White, Some Baguettes etc...
You may have a point, trying to find in the next few weeks a second-hand Mockmill.
For everyone information: I found out that the Ankarsrum Grain Mill is made by a German company called The Familly Grain. They are selling mainly accessories for mixer brands such as KA, Bosh, Wondermix
http://familygrainmill.com/index.php/family-grain-mill/
Arno,
I've had the Anskarum Mill for about 5 years now. When grinding flour, however, I use my NutriMill which grinds a lot finer than the Anskarum but will not give me cracked rye which is a very coarse grind. The Anskarum will give me the coarse grind for Dark German Pumpernickel (Hammelman's Horst Bandel bread recipe).
If you want flour as fine as store bought you will not get it with either a NutriMill or the Anskarum. I tried to make 1st clear flour from whole wheat but it required hours of sifting. You'd really need a commercial sifting machine to get that fine. I was using a #20 & #50 sieve.
I've been making a Polish Country ( White & Rye), Sour Rye and Tartine Wheat, for almost 10 years and been grinding my flour for 8 years. All my friends and grandkids love the product and the only fine flour I buy is Bread Flour(High Protein) and All Purpose (Low Protein) because I can't sift fine enough to make white flour. I buy 50lbs bags of Organic Red Wheat grains and Rye Grains from a nearby farmer along with some Spelt and Einkorn. I feel I'm best off with my ground flours with the increased bran than with store bought brands. For my rye and wheat I used to use Hodgkins Mills flours but my milled flours give me better tasting results.
Since you are telling me you have a small kitchen I think the Anskarum is still the best investment for you since it won't consume a lot of space and while it may take longer to grind your flour finer- a couple of extra passes won't consume your day completely. It's also more economical than buying a single purpose grain mill. At the end of the day it will give you the best bang for the GBP.
Regards and Happy Baking,
Big Crusty
Morning BigCrusty,
Thanks for your experience.
With the endless possibilities of the Mockmill, I think I will try to get a second-hand Mockmill. With the space issue, I will see whenever I have managed to get one.
Thank you all of you.
I ordered today a Mockmill 200.
The increased power on the Mockmill 200 eg 600w, the 200g of flour per minute convinced me.
Hi guys
I asked for some advice regarding the Ank mill attachment... and I end up buying the MockMill 200...
Milled some rice flour to clean as requested, I milled my first wholewheat flour yesterday.
Thanks again for all your advice
It looks great. Earlier today, I commented on your IG post. A grain mill is something I’ll be purchasing next month. I’m looking at the GrainMaker grain mill. However, I've heard great things about the Mockmill. I’ve ground some grains years ago and recently I even ground some with my Vita Mix, however, I need a mill that can handle grinding grains effectively. Thus far, how are you liking the mill?
Hi, I baked 3 loaves with freshly milled wheat flour.
I will need to adapt the hydration level, as it seems it absorb more water... but again, my milled flour would not be the same wheat grains than the one at the commercial flour mill.
The taste of the bread is simply so different, more natural, sort of soil, hearthy, woody, nutty...
I am using ATM the Farro wheat grain
The Mockmill is perfect for me, small on the kitchen counter, you can get some very fine flour. (I dont want to mill my white flour, as it is too much of sifting. May be one day.
I mill the exact amount of flour I need for either my starter or my wholewheat bread.
Welcome to the home-milling club. Some home-milling users you might want to follow are: ifs201, danni3ll3, SheGar, pmccool, DanAyo, barryvabeach, MTloaf, SeasideJess, deblacksmith, dabrownman, UpsideDan -- and apologies to any I missed.
Thanks for those, I was trying to find some yesterday.
Just tried to follow you, but not found the way to do it.
I will search more in a couple of hours.
if you feed your starter fresh milled WW, there are two things:
Net: If you want your starter to stay/perform the way it does now, only feed it store-bought white flour, or whatever you were feeding it,
---
There is no official "follow" button on TFL, that i know of. You just have to browse the comment headings, and click on the comments of people you want to learn from.
Hi Idaveindy,
Thanks for those.
My starter has totally overflown its normal container, I was very surprised by how lively it was...
My starter is a rye 100% hydration. I used it for all my bread, white or wholewheat. (I can't be bothered to have several starters)
I think the Rye starter is easier to maintain and has quickly a great fermentation activity. Also, when I tried WW starter, due to the gluten contains (i suppose) it was harder to stir. Hence I stayed with rye starter.
(Trying to combine a couple things you said...)
Fresh-milled rye is also more active than store-bought rye flour, just like fresh-milled WW is more active than store-bought WW.
So if you are milling the rye that you feed your starter, same thing applies as what I wrote about WW.
I used to feed my starters a combo of whole wheat and white flour, but I now subscribe to the reasoning that store bought white flour is the most "neutral" thing to feed a starter (sticking with flour, and not using maltodextrin, maltose, or dextrose). After all, the bugs in the starter merely want sugars and oxygen to reproduce.
There needs to be some enzymes in the feed flour to break down the starches to sugar. In the US, virtually all (with a few exceptions) retail-sold white flour has malted barley flour or amylase added, which is not universally true in other countries.
I like the particular strain of sourdough culture that I'm using now, so I use only store-bought white flour for maintenance feedings, in hopes that it will maintain the original strains of yeast and LAB, and not be over-taken by different ones coming in via whole-grain (ie with bran) feed-flour.
It is said that even white flour has at least some yeast/LAB that once lived on the bran of the grain. Surely some got transfered from the outer bran layer to the endosperm as the grains got cracked/crushed in the roller mill. But it also seems logical to me that white flour will have less of them than whole grain flour that has all the bran.
Hi Arno, congratulations on getting a mockmill 200. I think you will enjoy it very much. I have found the mill works great and the company is very responsive and helpful. I look forward to hearing about your baking!
Thank you.
Well not sure I can compete with all the pro and semi-pro that I am finding here.
But for sure I will have to adapt my recipe to those this very thirsty flours.
Last night I started a sourdough dough with fresh wholewheat 41% + Fresh barley 18% + Strong white 41% with a 77% hydration. Bulk fermentation for 18 hours in the fridge.
Next step is a 12 hours in the fridge in a banneton.
I will post a pic tomorrow when I will bake it