The Grain Mill and Bread Making Saga

My Grain Mill
"They don't make 'em like this anymore"

Wheat Berries (organic!)

The Oven.
It is often quirky, but after 26 years of using it, I know it's eccentricities.

The dough was heavy. No surprise the bread was, too.
Note: electrical appliances are not unknown in my kitchen.

The Final, Mostly Unrisen Product
It won't compete in the open market with Wonder Bread.

Some months ago, Alice Friedemann gave presentations to East Bay Peak Oil and San Francisco Oil Awareness about the use of a grain mill, and why this would be an important tool to have for survival in case of "unpleasant circumstances" transpiring surrounding a potential energy famine.

Grain mills come in several flavors, most notably manual, electric, and bisexual, or rather those which are both manual and electric (hybrids?).

Alice presented us with recipes for using our milled grains, she discussed a multi-grained cereal she makes, and she gave us yummy samples of some of her quick breads.

She suggested we go out and buy grain mills for our own self-protection/preservation. I thought it was a good idea, but I don't shop a lot these days (for personal and economic reasons) and until recently, when the subject of grain mills resurfaced during an email discussion I was involved with, I had left the subject of the grain mill on my back burner. There have been enough other things going on and problems with my health this summer of 2006, and it hadn't seemed to be a high priority.

The end of August found me rife with cash for me (i.e. I wasn't broke as usual) so I went up around the corner from my long-term abode on Haight Street, a block north on Divisadero, to a store named Cookin', which an online review of the store terms "a 'recycled gourmet appurtenances' shop ... owned and operated by a Ms. J Kaminsky." (note: Ms. Kaminsky seems to have a bit of an attitude problem at times, but her bark is worse than her bite, so far, anyway).

Cookin' must have two or three of EVERYTHING ever made for the kitchen, regardless of which century they were forged. And the store had two manual grain mills (electric ones wouldn't be much use during a long-term energy disaster, would they?), so I bought the cheap one (which was shinier! whee!) for thirty-three bucks. It is certainly an antique, and it looks vaguely like the food grinder my mother used to make relish and other fun foods when I was a kid, an ancient appliance for which I have most of the parts stashed away in my own kitchen, though I don't relish relish anymore.

But this new grain mill is heavier. And bigger. And much, much heavier, actually. In fact it weighs only a few pounds short of a ton, and it seems it needs to weigh a ton just to cope with wheat berries, for they're stout little seeds that apparently don't relish being turned into flour.

I was happy because it was cheap, used, and they whole 'shopping experience' fit in with the personal "lower energy lifestyle" I am striving to live.

I bake my own bread a lot, but, as Alice mentioned during her presentations last year, even "stone ground whole wheat flour" that I buy in my local "pretend-co-op" (it is a store with food in bins, but a guy & his family run it rather than a cooperative group of like-minded folk) is not, in fact, whole grain, simply because whole-wheat flour goes rancid after a few days if not used, and the store's whole wheat flour does NOT spoil at all. (Adelle Davis mentioned the tendency of whole wheat flour to spoil in her seminal book Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit, a book I read and followed religiously for about 2 years circa 1975, but I'd put this disturbing fact out of my mind since then.)

After the purchase of the mill, I went to the fake co-op (which is another block north on Divisadero) and bought some organic wheat berries, with which I planned to bake my first loaf of truly whole grain bread. This was exciting.

I lugged the thing and my berries home.

I set up the mill on my butcher block table. It's the sturdiest thing in my kitchen, but, as I quickly discovered, when milling flour it is unfortunate the table sits on wheels (casters), since the energy needed to grind wheat, as well as the forces expended turning the mill to do this, are very disruptive, and the table swooned and swerved as I struggled to churn the device.

Making flour is hard work! I started to fantasize about what a luxury it would have been for my Iowa ancestors to go down to the river where mills used water power to turn these solid berries into powder for them. Unfortunately San Francisco has no active working mills making flour right now that I know of.

I had to put the wheat berries through the grain mill three times to come up with a flour that was pretty fine, but still coarser than what I get in the bin at the fake co-op. The milling turned the muscles of my right shoulder a bit sore after the experience. To whine some more, my left elbow has been suffering from bursitis these past few weeks of waning summer, and even had a nasty infection till recently, and using my left arm to try to keep the butcher block table from sliding out the window or strolling through the apartment made the elbow swell up a bit again (presently so does simply walking, so that's not as dramatic as it may sound). I took long breaks between each round of milling so the sweat would dry, and after much work, it took me all of two hours to make enough flour to bake a loaf of bread.

I was glad I didn't have to go down to the "crick" to "worsh" my clothes, too. My but we take electricity for granted!

After the flour was made, I didn't continue with the "energy purity" of the final bread product. When it came to kneading it. I simply used the Cuisinart to do that work, thus I can't say it was a completely hand-made loaf that I put together. I didn't feel like pounding and stretching it, being spent from the grinding of it.

Boy did that fresh flour smell good, and my but did that bread taste good, but alas the dough did not rise much. I think it was still too coarse for the yeast to do its work properly.

For the moment, I am temporarily back to using lesser stone ground flour until my left elbow is further along in its recovery. But the added flavor (not to mention nutrition) of the homemade flour means I'll likely mill again, when able.