Purchasing a grain mill or grain grinder is one of the best purchases that you will ever make for your family. It does not take much of an imagination to remember the smell of your home filled with the aroma of freshly baked bread. Can you also remember a time when your mother baked bread and pastries and you could smell it even outside. You knew instinctively that you were in for a treat. Remember the warmth and security you felt in your home during those times. Well, you can have that same aroma and feeling more often around your home when you finally purchase a grain mill or grinder for your home.
If you have decided to purchase one or you have just begun to think about it, there are some things that you should know before making the purchase. What you learn in the homework process can make a big difference in what you ultimately decide.
One of the main concerns is what kind of grain will your mill grind and what will it not grind. The following is a list of things that most often can be milled by most grain grinders.
Hard and soft wheat Oats Rice Triticale Kamut Spelt Dried Beans Corn Popcorn Split Peas Buckwheat Barley Rye Millet Sorghum Dried Mung Beans Soybeans
This list covers most of the grains that you will ever want but there are some things that home grain mills cannot handle well and you need to know before making your purchase. For example, most home mills cannot handle an oily type nut or seed.
Here are some of them:
Any grain allowed to get damp or wet…it must be dried first Almonds Cashews Flax Seed Mustard Seeds Peanuts Pecans Sesame Seeds Sunflower Seeds
There are others, but these represent the most common.
If you try to put nuts through a grinder even if they have been dried, the nuts will become gummy and make an enormous mess.
The last major consideration is the coarseness of the grind. Grain mill are usually divided into 3 types.
Stone Grinder-They will normally grind from extremely fine to extremely coarse Impact Grinder-They will normally grind from fine to coarse Burr Grinder-They will normally grind from fine to coarse
What do you plan to do with you home grain mill? That is the question you will have to answer before ultimately making a decision. Do you bake a lot of cakes? Then a stone grinder may be in order although some impact grinders also make very fine flour. Will a fine grind fit your needs? Are you looking for coarse or extremely coarse grind for meal? The decisions are numerous. Once you have made the decision about what you plan to do with the grain mill, you can begin to focus.
I recommend that you find a good grain mill comparison or grain mill review site on the web before making any decisions. It is just one of the pieces of your homework, but it is a very important one. There are a few sites that you can get detailed information to make your final decision. Be sure to complete this very important part of your home work assignment.
If you buy the right home grain mill, you will always be happy that you made the decision because of the whole grain goodness you will find in every delectable bite of breads, cakes, pies and tarts that you make.