Grinding flour at home is easy these days. There is an abundance of
at-home milling products and no shortage of hype about them. You'll
find staunch advocates of stone mills. These produce the
finest-textured flour, but are costly. The sales pitch is that
stones grind at low temperature and do not damage the oils (remember
the development of rancidity is a function of temperature) or the
vitamins, which are also destroyed at high temperature. This
assertion is half true. If you are going to store your flour it is
far better to grind it cool. However, if you are, as we do, going to
immediately bake your flour, what difference does it make if it gets
a little warm before baking. That only accelerates the action of the
yeast.
On the negative side, stone mills grind slowly and are very fussy
about which grains they will grind. If the cereal is a bit moist or
if the seed being ground is a little bit oily, the mill becomes
instantly blocked.
Steel burr mills grind fast and coarsely and are inexpensive. Coarse
flour makes heavy bread. The metal grinding faces tend to wear out
and have to be replaced occasionally--if they can be replaced. Breads
on the heavy side are still delicious; for many years I made bread
with an inexpensive steel burr mill attachment that came with my
juicer.
Some steel burr mills will also grind oily seed like sesame and
sunflower. However, oily seeds can be ground far more easily
half-a-cup at a time in a little inexpensive electric spice/coffee
mill, the sort with a single fast-spinning propeller.
I currently think the best compromise are hammermills. The grain
dribbles into a chamber full of fast-spinning teeth that literally
pound the grain into powder. Since air flows through with the grain
the flour is not heated very much. This type of mill is small, very
fast, intermediate in price between steel mills and stone mill,
lasts a long time, but when grinding, sounds like a Boeing 747 about
to take off. It is essential to wear hearing protectors when using
it.
Awareness of bread quality is growing. One excellent new U.S.
business, called Great Harvest Bakery is a fast-growing national
franchise chain. They bake and sell only whole grain breads; all
their wheat flour is freshly ground daily on the premises in the
back. Unfortunately, as of the writing of this book, they do not
grind their rye flour but bring it in sacks. I can't recommend their
rye breads. The founder of Great Harvest is a knowledgeable buyer
who fully understands my next topic, which is that wheat is not
wheat.
There are great differences between hard bread wheats; being
organically grown is no cure all for making good or nutritious
bread. Great Harvest understands this and uses top quality grain
that is also Organic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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