Lori Summer

Subscribed! Whoot!! 🌿🌱🌻

Wow! Thanks for sharing this weath of information! I super appreciate it! ❤️❤️❤️

I've decided I'm going to get one of those vacuum sealing thingys for Mason jars. I'll definitely be trying out your technique. I hear the Food Saver is a good one and saw it being used on YouTube. Thanks for sharing your tip!

Lucky you, Edward! Congratulations!! 🎉🎊

Interesting. Thanks for the feedback. It sounds like a really good mill!

Dang, this forum is a wealth of yummy information. I'm so glad I found it!!

That's a good technique. Thanks for the info! What does the hole caused by the chopstick in the middle of the flour do? What size canning jars are you using?

I've mostly shied away from storing flour for all the reasons you pointed out here, and I've recently read that the vitamins in the flour break down rapidly once the grain is milled. Basically, all the "whole wheat" flour on the grocery shelves has still had the good stuff removed so it will last longer and what's left is devoid of nutrients. It's basically white flour with fiber. 😜

My way of approaching it has been to store the grain (which can last a decade or more) until I can process it into flour at the time I would use it. I know mills are expensive, and I don't have one myself yet, but people say the hand crank ones can be found in second hand stores (not around where I live) for cheap. The trade off is obvious. The flour will be coarse and the work will be long and hard.

Then there's investing in a good flour grinder, so it depends on how much you love bread. 😉 And I ❤️ fresh whole wheat bread!

If you haven't checked it out yet...

I've been researching grain mills and all of them have their limitations. There's always a trade-off.  Some are good for some things, but are noisy, or slow, some are for coarse, others are better for fine, and some spray your dwelling with flour dust... People are owning collections of these bulky, expensive things, one for each different need that they have, sometimes using more than one device to process one batch of flour.

I like to read what the company says about it's product, but I pay close attention to what customers say in their reviews, and the KoMo Mill has over 2 pages of reviews, many from seasoned home millers who have used many devices (and name those devices!) and give a wealth of feedback concerning every aspect you can imagine when it comes to milling stuff. When you stop and consider, a mill is a costly investment, and I'm all FOR learning from the mistakes (ie., hard won wisdom) of others. And yes, people return after using this mill for YEARS and leave valuable comments.

I don't know about you, but I like the idea of putting down cash for a good quality product, and only doing it ONCE, and that product continuing to serve my ever changing needs for a long long time. I don't think i ask for too much. 😏

What I've learned about the KoMo mill: firstly, this thing has a 12 year warranty. You can replace parts (in the rare event that you need to) rather than the entire thing becoming a piece of junk. They care about the environment and their workers, AND their customers. It does just about everything a variety of mills can do, from super coarse to super fine, and it grinds a whole lot more than wheat (one reviewer does almond flour!). It's easy to clean, it's pretty, has a (reportedly quiet) half horsepower motor, does the job at about 9 ounces of flour per minute and you can pour two pounds of grain into the hopper all at once! Did I mention I was slightly lazy? I'd like to just stand there and watch the good stuff come out of it (and save my sweat equity for the kneading part, which I oddly enjoy).

Anyway, I'm glad I checked it out. The Pleasant Hill Grain site has a lot of other nifty stuff on it (canned high quality butter (from New Zealand!) that lasts over 2 years!), and they have the decency to announce that, unfortunately, Austria says the price (of this mill in particular) is going to have to increase soon (what isn't these days?), and the company, understanding that a purchase like this tends to be one you may "have your eye on for a while," like myself, kindly wishes to circumvent the pain of a surprise and let you know ahead of time. What company does that with this degree of sincerity and caring for their customers? I don't know many. In fact, prices have been fluctuating wildly with abandon lately, and it's just rude, imo.

So, does anyone here have one? Are there some nuggets of wisdom you can share with me? Any and all would be appreciated, I don't care if you've had it even just a short time, what do you think about it?I'm only mildly experienced with milling machines so I'm an eager student. I'm obviously impressed with it and I've been looking for perfect for a long time, but it's time to finally make a decision.

Lori

Whole wheat berries last for a loooooong looooong time. Decades, I've heard. I just checked out the Pleasant Hill Grain site (that's hosting that amazing Austrian made (KoMo) grain mill giveaway) and they have several varieties of whole wheat berries they sell in bulk (in long term storage bucket containers) with free shipping. There's hard red wheat and durum and Einkorn, and spelt and other modern and ancient grains. They tell you the uses, how to store it, a bit about it's history, and some sciencey stuff. They have amazing reviews too. Definitely worth checking out. 👍

I would ask the Native Americans, but I understand that they mostly dealt with acorns (or corn). Still this makes me think of all those large rocks near rivers with little divots where people ground acorns into flour with other smoothed stones. My dad use to have a stone bowl (with three legs) and a stone "pestle" type thing for grinding wheat berries. No, we used it as more of an ornamental thing, but if you had to, you could use it.