Kenwood Grain Mill - Cooking Recipes Forums

I'll skip the questions I can't reply to...

Noises Off wrote:

That depends on what you want and who you listen to. Millers talk about

the percent of extraction when refering to flour. If a flour is 60%

extraction, that means that 60% of the wheat winds up in the flour bag.

The rest is discarded, sold to other channels, or used as animal fodder.

From what I've read, most whole wheat flours in the USA are about 85%

extraction. The other 15% contains minerals, fiber, and other "good

things". A grain mill, unless you sift the output, will produce 100%

extraction flour. Everything that goes in comes out the other side. If

you have a micronizer mill, the flour will be uniform enough that there

is no point in trying to sift it. A burr mill or stone mill will

produce siftable flour.

There is some debate about the quality of micronized flour for

breadmaking. If you look at the web sites that sell micronizers, such

as the WhisperMill and Nutrimill, all their recipes require the addition

of dough conditioners and vital wheat gluten to get a decent rise out of

the breads. Some members of the Bread Baker's Guild of America have

related stories about a miller who went from using a stone mill to a

micronizer, and the quality of his flour dropped to the point where the

professional bakers refused to use it.

The burr grinders tend to produce a coarser flour, which also has

issues. Basically, the fiber prevents bread from rising well.

Commercial whole wheat is harder to make a nicely risen loaf from than

white flour, while the home ground 100% extraction flour is another

order of magnitude or two more difficult.

What about the improved nutrition? Well, most of it is bound up by

phytic acid, so your body can't utilize the additional nutrients.

Luckily, sourdough and long rises do break down the phytic acid, so if

you use sourdough you can see some of the additional nutrients in your diet.

It is worth mentioning that in the middle ages the aristocrats ate white

bread, the peasants ate wheat bread. The artistocrats lived longer.

Some people say it's because they had access to medical care. Right.

Think about the quality of the physicians in those days.

I have owned a WhisperMill, a NutriMill, and a burr grinder attachment

for my KitchenAid mixer. I prefer the KitchenAid attachment overall. I

use it for cracking grains for flavor and texture accents, and to grind

small amounts of flour. The WhisperMill and NutriMill didn't help me

make the kinds of breads I wanted to make.

No, not unless you spill the flour.

Yes and no. If you use it fresh from the milling machine, its fine. If

you wait a day or two, the flour tends to handle poorly. At that point,

you need to let it age a few weeks.

However, the flour you grind can go rancid if stored too long. I think

its best to use it as soon as its ground, and to not make more than you

can use in a day or two.

I suspect the Kenwood is very similar to the KitchenAid, so check your

manual to find out what the limitations are on using the grinder

attachment. You may be warned not to mill more than a certain amount,

and to let the mixer cool off after that for a certain length of time.

If you find some wheat, or rye, or other grains, please tell us how you

did. As a side comment, perhaps more for American than international

readers, if you can find dried corn, grinding it into corn meal just

before you make cornbread totally redefines what cornbread is and should be.