I’ve been wanting to try a new grain mill for 2 years and just recently bought one and wanted to share about my grain mill experiences.
I started off with a Kitchen Aid grain mill attachment because when I started baking I already had a Kitchen Aid mixer. This attachment is excellent for large grains like rice and buckwheat but cannot grind small gluten free grains like amaranth, quinoa and teff. These tiny grains just fall under the grinding worm and sit there.
The rice flour wasn’t nearly as fine as store bought but my breads were still good thanks to the long sourdough fermenting periods. Then I learned, from someone on this forum, to grind once at medium and then again on fine. Much, much better!
I like the Kitchen Aid but I can only do 3 cups of rice, twice, before the machine gets very hot and needs to cool off. I don’t mind that, just have to plan my time accordingly.
I used a Krups coffee grinder for my small grains, which did an excellent job. The downside is that only ¼ cup can be ground at a time, which was fine initially but now I bake in 4 loaf batches and need large quantities.
Then I tried a Barista coffee mill for the small grains which was bigger, fancier and with a larger capacity. I was happy with that for a good while but lately noticed the grind isn’t as fine as when I started. I think the blades must be getting dull.
After a year of reading blogposts about grain mills I finally purchased the Blendtec Grain Mill. It grinds the small grains really well, excellently in fact but I had to dig out my chain saw ear protectors because of the high decibel level. As it finishes grinding it sounds like a plane taking off.
It also makes a bit of a mess as it sends flour out through small vents and slots, much messier than my other mills which hardly sent any flour out at all. Now when I use it I cover it with a cloth to contain the flying flour. Beyond that it seems to be an excellent machine. I can grind many cups of grain, and the holding basin holds about 20 cups of flour before needing to be emptied.
I continue to use my Kitchen Aid for rice and buckwheat but will use the Blendtec for the others.
