Nutrimill Grain Mill

In 2004, I bought our very first grain mill  and began a lifelong passion for freshly milled grains! Given my current state of domestic dysfunction, I was very unsure of what I was getting into and  doubted that I could even accomplish this task of home milling, but the features of the Nutrmill soon gave me the confidence to home mill our grains fresh and daily right in my kitchen. As a beginner, I chose the Nutrimill for a few very specific features.

The Nutrimill is very user friendly. It is compact in form and (thankfully) quite idiot proof. The grain hopper extender (which allows for a large quantities to be loaded without refilling) proved a step saver. The flour hopper can be removed with ease and the  indicators of YES or NO help me to avoid making a huge mess (when I read them as I should). The design of the machine keeps it from being an eye-soar if I leave it out of the cupboard.  After learning some of the particulars of the Nutrimill I learned to dust the rim inside with flour for easy lid removal and to listen for the change in motor sound to hear when the milling process was almost finished. The lifetime warranty and company support are both very impressive.

I highly recommend the Nutrimill for anyone who considers him/herself a novice in this journey in home milling.  If you’re starting to learn the skills needed for whole grain, fresh flour baking  the Nutrimill gives you the ease and convenience that is just about as easy as buying unhealthy, bags of flour. It gives you the benefits of the freshly milled whole grain in minutes. The speed and consistent outcome helps to make this a stable addition for a healthy kitchen.

It is likely that you will want to store quinoa in an airtight container and keep it refrigerated, because of its higher fat content. You will want to rinse Quinoa out very well in a fine meshed sieve or cheese cloth or rinse it at least three times in a bowl because it comes with a coating of a natural substance called saponin that can taste quite bitter if not removed by rinsing.

Quinoa cooks more quickly than most other whole grains and is ready to eat in roughly fifteen to twenty minutes. Quinoa prepared on its own makes a great side dish or it can be cooked with a little olive oil or butter and onion to make a pilaf. It’s also great in salads or as dressed up as a warm breakfast cereal. We like to add them to veggie wraps to boost the protein intake from a low fat source of whole grains.

Photo from Health Food Nation

Photo from The Quinoa Corparation

This mill has options that you won’t find in an electric mill but is not at all hard to use. It is extremely sturdy and user friendly. With two milling head options, you can mill both a super fine pastry flour or almonds into nut butter. You can adjust the coarseness with the easy dial of a knob!

Take a look at this little short demo I made when I first got the mill and found out how very much I enjoyed it! Manual grain milling was never so easy…..

Meet my Wondermill Jr. Deluxe

Go watch the video!

The Millers own and operate Millers Grain House which offers Chemical Free and Organic Grains, Grain Mills, Bread Machines,Grain buckets, Bosch Mixers, the NutriMill, instructional tutorials, recipes and more.

Here are a few more little tips I have learned to show myself ‘why to bother’:

• It takes no more time than grabbing a bag of dead flour. Throw the grains in the Nutrimill, turn it on and by the time I’ve gathered the other ingredients for the recipe, the mill is done.

• Even the Nutrimill has saved us money! We eat pizza every Friday night. We used to order 3 Large pizzas from Papa Johns, Dominos or Little Caesars. At the tune of between $30-$40 any given Friday. Now I make pizza crusts ahead of time and use fresh ingredients (and I might add less fats/grease) and make 3 16 inch pizzas for $10.00 total! In less than three months, we had paid for the mill on pizza nights alone!

• Last but not least, you don’t have to start our as a purist. If you HAVE to add, change or substitute a pinch here and there to get your family to eat the freshly milled grains that are so packed with nutrients, then just do that until you have experimented enough to use only the grains you mill. Using even 3/4 of a cup of freshly milled wheat vs. the usual ‘dead bagged flour’ gives your family more fiber, E and other phyto nutrients than they can get from fast foods or frozen waffles.

Relax. EnJOY it!

Now not only are you convinced because of these little tips, but your friends and family will see the confidence in you and not worry that you will soon begin brushing your teeth with sugar or go back to believing the world is flat, just because you mill grains at home. Milling grains at home is not old fashioned, it just makes good sense.

Best Blessings!
Donna

http://www.millersgrainhouse.com/store

Go Green with the WonderMill Jr. Deluxe

Level off at the top to measure correctly!

Measure correctly to avoid excess flour after grinding.

One of the BIGGEST reasons for grinding grains is the immediate release of all those nutrients. If you end up with a cup or more of flour just sitting there, oxidizing, dying and loosing nutrients…it not only wastes precious fresh flour – it defeats the purpose. A good rule of thumb to follow is: Grains usually produce half again as much as you put in the mill. For example: 2 cups of grain will produce approximately 3 cups of flour. Write the amount of grain next to your recipe once you have perfected it. Waste not want not!

You can mill pastry flour from soft wheat (vs. the hard wheat that make good loaf bread) but it will not be silky smooth like bagged flour because the hulls (aka: bran., fiber) are not separated. You could sift it to get some of them out, but then again that is tedious and may not be necessary. For a texture of a pastry good that we are ‘used to’ it may be that you would have to use 1/4-1/2 of the flour as bagged organic pastry flour (still missing vital oils and oxidized but does lack chemicals and bleach) and the remaining part as freshly milled (to at least add more nutrients and fiber). Otherwise, the pastry flour straight from the soft wheat as milled is a whole wheat and will be a bit more dense than say a croissant type texture.

The way I look at it, even if 1/2 the recipe is freshly milled soft wheat, then you are getting more nutrients and bran than the usual pastry flour with it’s bleach and oxidized nutrients. Also if you go organic vs. regular bagged pastry flour, you are avoiding the chemicals and added synthasized viatmins that your body doesn’t recognize anyway.

Happy Milling!
Donna Miller

http://www.millersgrainhouse.com/store