Kevin Olson wrote:Kiko Denzer's wife Hannah Field mentions in a sidebar in their book "Build Your Own Earth Oven" that she really likes the flour from their Retsel (made in Idaho Falls, ID or environs). I almost pulled the trigger on a used one, but didn't. The Retsels can be had both with stones for flour, and steel burrs for more oily items (nuts, coffee, etc.). But, I don't know if the Retsel could de-hull oats or buckwheat. Some of the customer service stories involving Retsel are also cautionary, though they may be exceptional.
So, I bought a used Retsel Little Ark off Ebay, very cheaply. It was cosmetically challenged, and only had a set of stones. It also lacked the funnel, but I knew that I could file most of the threads off a plastic soda bottle, cut off the bottom of the bottle and jam the mostly-threadless neck into the appointed orifice as a temporary stand-in for the funnel.
I just used the mill on Thursday to make my first loaf of wheat bread as commissioning run (not my first loaf of bread, just the first one from this mill). It took about 40 minutes (!) to grind 500 grams (about a pound - enough for one small boule loaf) of hard red wheat, but this is at the finest setting, stones barely kissing at the closest point of approach (something isn't quite square - whether stone to body, shaft bearing or perhaps a slightly bent auger shaft). This is quite a workout (!), but did produce a much finer flour than I could manage with the Messerschmidt/Family Grain Mill steel burrs, even with 2 passes though that mill. The resulting flour by feel and eye is every bit as fine as the white King Arthur bread flour, despite being whole meal (though I did not conduct a quantitative assessment).
I need to rig up a flour shield, similar to the Wonder Mill, Jr. setup. Even at I'm-getting-tired hand crank speeds, flour gets slung out at the periphery of the stones, making a bit of a mess. I made a temporary shield from taped together paper, so that most of the flour fell into the bowl (which had a baking sheet under it, to catch more of the stray flour), but it was a bit of a Mickey Mouse arrangement, and I think I can do better, even if only with a sheet of Mylar or oak tag paper. I trolled through Walmart, Goodwill and another consignment store yesterday, while I was in town running other errands (buying hot mud to mend plaster walls, etc.), but didn't see anything that was immediately serviceable. I'm thinking a small stainless steel dog dish, with a flat bottom slightly larger than the 4" (100mm) diameter of the stones and conical sides, may be the best solution. It will require some cutting (maybe a thin cutoff wheel in a Dremel), some sort of hinge (hog rings or loops of tie wire?) and probably keyhole slots, with screws on the back side of the mill. This plan is still fermenting, so don't take it to the bank!
The resulting bread was also slightly gritty, in the eating. I'd previously run a few cups of brown rice through the mill, prior to grinding the wheat, to clean the stones (no idea of the history of this mill, since it came from Ebay), but it may not have been enough rice to properly condition the stones, especially if this mill had been only lightly used (and it had been used, since I ended up using a carbide scribe, an awl and a stiff grout brush to dry clean the stones, both prior to the rice run, and afterward). It is also possible that I had the stones set slightly too close together (especially in light of the evidently off-kilter mechanism), and was scuffing off a bit of the abrasive of these synthetic stones. If so, I don't want to repeat that. But, this was an experiment to find out just how finely this mill will grind, not necessarily how I want to grind all of my flour, and
the answer to that is "plenty fine".
Though tasty and perfectly edible, this bread was also a bit dense (think cocktail rye...or, less charitably, doorstop), but that is likely either the fault of the baker (inadequate kneading failed to fully develop the gluten? other troubles?) or weak yeast. I raised the bread in a thermostatically controlled proofing
oven, but it certainly didn't "double in volume". This yeast is perfectly adequate for King Arthur white bread flour, but I understand that freshly ground whole meal is a bit more challenging. I bought some fresh yeast. We'll see. Eventually, I'd like to try the desem bread, per Laurel's Kitchen, but that may be a bit out in the schedule.
The fixed stone on this model of mill
should be removable, so that steel burrs can be swapped onto it to grind more oily materials (flax seed, coffee beans, etc.). But, on this particular mill, the fixed stone seems well and truly stuck to the mill body (glued? part of the fun of stuff with "prior experience", I suppose). I think I'll order a spare set of stones from Retsel when I order a set of steel burrs. That way, if I inadvertently break the fixed stone in the process of swapping for the steel burrs, I'll have a fresh spare stone on hand. And, if I manage to remove the fixed stone intact, I'll have a spare pair, just in case - no bad thing. Seemingly, there are also masa specific burrs available from Retsel for at least some of their mills, if that is a need, though I couldn't definitively determine if that's the case for this model.
I suspect a rice/oat hulling setup could be whipped up for one of these mills by making wooden (or metal, if you have the means) plates analogous to the stones/burrs, faced with hard rubber sheet (Durometer TBD). It might be necessary to make one or both faces conical, so that the clearance is closer at the outer periphery than at the inner diameter, to facilitate feeding into the gap. This is entirely speculative, but I have looked at several DIY rice hulling designs in the past, so it is (slightly) informed speculation.
I'll make a few more runs with this mill in its as-received state. My ultimate objective is to rig up a drive for the KitchenAid mixer's PTO. This can be fairly trivially done by filing/milling four flats on the stock input shaft, where the three-flatted crank handle fits, so that it will socket into the KA PTO, then shimming/blocking the mill body up to the correct height, and positioning a bowl to catch the flour out beyond that. But, that would almost certainly remove the crank drive flats. That's also a lot of "string length", as a machinist would say, and I would like to set it up so that the flour drops directly into the mounted mixer bowl, similar to the MockMill KA attachment. This will require driving from the opposite end of the auger, a reversal of the PTO drive rotation direction, and possibly an Oldham coupling or similar to accommodate some minor misalignment between the mill and mixer. Adjusting the grind from the crank side of the mill may also be more convenient, depending on what the KA drive looks like, in the end. But, I think this approach could provide the desired one-size-fits-most cereal grain processor, and at a more accessible price than say, the Diamant or GrainMaker, which are no doubt lovely, but well above my beer and pretzels budget. And, it will still leave the hand drive unmolested, in case I need a good workout (!).
Nothing like a challenge, eh?
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