Milling Grains at Home

A few years ago I was getting into making tortillas and muffins and waffles from scratch.  A friend of mine had a grain mill and made her own flour at home.  At first it sounded so intense to me to make flour at home, but I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about homemade flour.  I didn't like the whole wheat flour at the store that much and I didn't want to just use white flour. I thought it would be fun to make my own flour.  Reading through the Nourishing Traditions Cookbook I learned that grains can quickly go rancid after grinding and they lose many of their nutrients after sitting on the shelf for a while.  I really wanted a grain mill and talked to my husband about it and we decided to invest some of our tax return money into a grain mill.  It has been a great purchase. I've used it nearly every week for over 3 years!  I love that I can buy many different kind of grains and I love that I can use flour that is fresh and has the most nutrients in it.  I have the Nutrimill and I love it!!  We bought it here in Amazon.  I buy my grains in bulk from Azure Standard and occasionally when I run out, I buy grains from the bulk bins at Whole Foods.  I have milled all kinds of grains in my mill; wheat berries, spelt, buckwheat, and rice.  It is nice to be able to use any grains and to be able to mix them together.  The type of wheat berry you use depends on what you are going to do with the flour.  If you are going to be making cakes and pastries then a soft white wheat works great for that.  If you are going to be making breads then you can use a hard wheat like red or white and rye berries work well in sourdough.  I usually use either hard red wheat berries or hard white wheat berries and rye berries.  I use most of my flour for making sourdough English muffins or sourdough pancakes.  

I'll walk you through what it is like to mill your own grains at home:

I store my grains in 5 gallon buckets in my laundry room. My husband got me these Gama screw lids for the buckets and they are great. Right now I have hard white wheat berries and rye berries (and a few groats I'm trying I use up too) 

Here is my Nutrimill,  it is kind of big, but thankfully I have a big cabinet in my kitchen that I can store it in.  

 I fill up the grain mill with the wheat berries, this is a mix of hard white and rye and a few groats (whole oats).

I usually take the grain mill into my bathroom and close the door because it is loud.

As you can see it is milling the grains.

Here is the lovely flour.

I put some of the flour into a container and some of it I use right away. 

I keep the flour in the freezer to keep it fresh to use throughout the week!! As you can see, milling grains at home is not all that hard :)