Flour Mill Adventures

My mother-in-law (M-I-L) is pretty much awesome, for more than several reasons....one of them being that she and her husband gave Michael and I their old flour mill.

So, it goes like this....I have wanted to be a frontier girl since I was like, maybe 11. Seriously...Kirsten from American Girl was my favorite, I wanted to be her and have a little indian friend I brought bread to down by the creek and have warm stones at the foot of my bed to keep my toes from freezing. Or Frontier House anyone? I LOVE PBS...but that is for another time. And now that I have a little time on my hands I have started making homemade bread.

My MIL asked me how that was going and after talking about what it would look like to get locally milled flour, she offered their old flour mill. She used to make homemade bread all the time and even made some 'dough' by selling it (hehe), and they ground their own flour. She sent us home w/the mill, some wheatberries and instructions.

The Mill

When I turned the mill on it sort of sounded like a jet trying to take off in my dining room....and there was a big puff of flour-it was so awesome.

The basic idea of grinding wheatberries into flour is you put them through the mill and the end result is nicely ground flour. This mill has varying settings from coarse (cracked wheat-ish) to fine (pastry flour). I followed my MIL recommendations for medium fine ground.

The Berries

Into The Mill

And The Finished Product

So, now we grind our own wheat! Hurray for lots of healthy, freshly baked bread! Now I just need that little indian friend. ;)

~Jenny