Well, after thinking about the choices for a long time, I finally bit the bullet and ordered the Grain maker 99. In second place....country Living. I seriously considered the ones made by Retsel but I read horrible things on line about their customer service and I need a company I can count on. First choice was actually Diamant but it was out of my price range. The grainmaker 99 was too, actually, but I did the paypal 6 months interest free and got it anyway. I love the quality. The milling on the burrs is a work of art! You can tell someone really cares about producing a nice product. And as an added bonus.......it's red. What's not to love??
So now the learning phase starts. I am ordering a couple of books on Amazon. I need to learn about grains and their uses, and find some good recipes. Any book suggestions out there?
looking forward to hanging out here more and leaning from all of you fine folks!
I recommend five books:
King Arthur Flour's Whole Grain Baking has the best discussion of the various grains, as well as a wide selection of recipes. It also covers sourdough.
Thom Leonard's The Bread Book is the best about home milling. It also covers grain growing and professional milling. It covers sourdough. It doesn't have a lot of recipes, but it covers both wheat and rye.
Robertson's The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book has a great selection of recipes, a short section on home-milling, and a lot of useful tips. A later edition includes bread machines.
Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads has some discussion of the various grains. It has the epoxy dough technique and good shaping tips.
Deppe's The Resilient Gardener is essential for milling and cooking dry maize (corn).
Please report on your experience with the Grainmaker.
Thank you for your reply. I just ordered three of those books from Amazon. Looking forward to their arrival! I suppose I should order some grain as well. I have plenty of hard white and hard red wheat. I think I should get some popcorn and soft white wheat.
a whole new level. There is nothing like the taste of fresh milled flour in bread. Until your get your books TFL is a great resource for milling and recipes using fresh milled whole grain flour. Here is one of mine from this week and there are over 400 more on my blog alone using fresh milled whole grains for most of them - not to mention then other recipes posted by other Fresh Lofians..
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/45211/another-westphalian-rye-100-whole-grain-half-sprouted-101-hydration
A whole new bread world awaits!
read the blogs of proth5 and bwraith here on TFL. You'll find other milling-related posts if you use the Search tool but Pat and Bill both play in the deep end of the home-milling pool. You're bound to find valuable information in their posts.
Paul
My books have arrived!Charbono, your suggestions were outstanding. Very useful. My cart to mount my grinder has arrived too. Now just awaiting my beautiful new mill.