How much time does it take to mill?

Milling is a very small part of the baking process - assuming you have an electric mill. My Nutrimill takes about 2 1/2 minutes per pound of flour. So I pour the wheat in the top of the mill, turn it on and while it is running, I get out my other ingredients for what I'm making. I never have to wait for the flour since it is ready before I have even gotten my other ingredients ready. I have a scale next to my mill so I can measure what I need if I am just milling for a specific recipe. One cup equals about 4 oz. or figure 4 cups per pound. If I have any extra flour at the end, I put it in a bag in the freezer to use later. For yeast bread I always use freshly milled. For things like pancakes, cookies, and banana bread, I tend to use the flour from the freezer since I haven't noticed a difference between freshly milled that day vs. freshly milled from the freezer.

Cleanup - my mill shoots the flour into a sealed bowl that is then covered in flour on the inside. Since I use my mill about every other day, I typically just brush the flour off with a pastry brush rather than washing with soap and water. There are several parts to the bowl and if you wash with water, make sure you get everything completely dry before using - flour and water make a pasty mess and you don't want wet flour. Also, the lid won't go back on the bowl unless you rub flour on the seal so it is easier if you just leave the flour on it and not wash it if you are using the mill all the time. I do wash it with water about every week or so. Other mills may not have the bowl to clean. The Fidibus 21 just has a little shoot that drops the flour into your own bowl. I'm guessing that since it is a stone mill, the flour comes out more gently whereas my steel impact mill requires a sealed bowl so my kitchen wouldn't be covered in flour.

Also considered in the time factor is where you get your wheat. Since you can't buy it at your local grocery store, you'll need to find a source for wheat. Fortunately for me, we have a wonderful store close to us that carries several varieties of wheat. Since I am all about efficiency and saving time, I bought 100 pounds of wheat last time so I wouldn't have to make an extra trip for grain for a few months. It is only 10 miles from us but not near my usual errands. The wheat comes in 50 pound bags and we transfer it to gallon ziploc bags so it is sealed and we can examine the wheat as we repackage it. I'll get more into storage of wheat later.

So in a nutshell, figure on the milling step taking you a total of 5 minutes per recipe including weighing, pouring, and cleanup. Compared to the amount of time it takes to actually measure, mix, knead, bake, etc., it is an insignificant amount of time for quality of flour you are getting.

How I got started milling flour

When I tell people I mill my own flour, I get a variety of reactions. Most people are just speechless and aren't sure what to say. Three months ago, I had never heard of anyone milling flour and thought the idea was ridiculous when I heard about it. When I met someone who milled, I thought "that's interesting.... why??" Then I started researching it. For an entire month, I read everything I could find on the topic. My favorite resource is the book Flour Power by Marleeta Basey. It goes into great detail about everything that never even occurred to me regarding flour. I found plenty of websites and discussion forums that didn't all agree on the details but overall it gave me a very clear message that I had to get a mill. I was able to find someone locally who mills her own flour and she graciously invited me over to let me taste truly fresh bread and see how easy it was to mill (thanks, Sommer!). I finally decided on which mill I wanted and ordered it. I chose the Nutrimill and have been very happy with it. I've been milling for about 6 weeks now. Tomorrow, I'll talk about how fast and easy it is to mill.

Homemade Caramel Corn

Our newest experiment is to make our own caramel corn. We always make our own popcorn on the stove but my husband took it a step further and tried making caramel corn. It was delicious when he made it - I am still trying to get this one right.

If you don't normally make your own popcorn, just try straight popcorn first. Then you can move on to caramel corn. Microwave popcorn doesn't count. I use a Whirley Pop on the stove. Making it yourself is so much cheaper and it has to be healthier when you control everything that goes into it. After I tasted popcorn made on the stove again (after several decades of eating microwave popcorn), I will never eat microwave popcorn again. I'm not really sure that my caramel corn recipe is the best and there are lots of other recipes on the internet so you can take your pick. Since we are trying to cut back on sugar, I think straight popcorn with a little salt is just fine for us but the caramel corn is a nice treat.

If you still want to stick to microwave popcorn, just google the words
"microwave popcorn" dangerous -- you might change your mind.

Egg McMuffins

Tonight we had the best egg sandwiches or Egg McMuffins as we call them. Egg McMuffin sounds so much better - good job marketing, McDonalds.

Why were the sandwiches so good? I used farm fresh eggs and homemade buns. It made all the difference. We've done them with English muffins and sandwiches rounds and they are good but the homemade buns put them over the top - the fresh flour really does make a difference. Havarti cheese and ham make it complete. My son normally will not eat eggs but he will eat egg sandwiches. Egg sandwiches might need to become a once a week meal here.

If you try this at home, just crack all your eggs into one bowl, add a little water and beat. Then pour the whole thing in a big skillet and cook like an omelet. Add cheese and ham at the end. When it's done, slide the whole giant egg onto a plate and cut into squares the size of your bread. This is much easier than trying to cook individual eggs unless you have a pan the right size. We used 8 eggs tonight - the eggs are great leftover too. If you aren't into the homemade buns yet, just use English muffins - it is too much bread for me so I usually make mine open-faced and just use half a muffin. I don't really know if the farm fresh eggs made them better. I mostly like the idea that I am eating eggs from a local farm. Please post if you try making egg sandwiches and how they turned out.

A note on the hamburger buns I tried a few days ago... they have taken on a life of their own. We now use them for any type of sandwiches instead of sliced bread. They just seem more appealing than the sliced bread. They are just a little more work but seem to worth the effort.

Farmer's Market Finds

For today we have Farmer's Market Stir Fry. Take whatever you got at the farmer's market and throw it in the pan. I used zucchini, eggplant, okra and tomatoes. Honestly, the eggplant wasn't worth the effort. I roasted the eggplant in the oven first. I think it would have been just fine without the eggplant but it's always good to try new things. When cooking, season however you want. Sprinkle the stir-fry with some parmigiano reggiano or just parmesan cheese at the table.

We also got farm fresh eggs at the farmer's market. My daughter never eats eggs but when she saw the brown farm eggs, she was intrigued so she was eager to try them. I made into an omelet with Harvarti cheese. She loved it! Hooray! One more healthy food she will eat! This is our first time buying farm fresh eggs. I think we'll need to keep buying them.

Next week we'll make caramel corn from scratch.

Our Intruder

We had an intruder tonight. I was carrying my Laura upstairs to bed and so couldn't really see in front of me but I know better than to ever walk anywhere in our house without making sure I don't step on a Lego or trip over a shoe. I saw something on the stairs that looked like I maybe shouldn't just kick it aside.

This was it...





I screamed because that's what I do - I scream over about anything. Lucky for me, my husband was home and was able to get it outside or we would not be able to go upstairs. Now I'm wondering how we managed to pick out carpet the same color as that frog. Yuck! I'll have to wait until tomorrow to talk about food again.

Gourmet Pigs in a Blanket

Today's experiment was to try to make pigs in a blanket using my own bread dough instead of Pillsbury crescent rolls. I figured that the homemade dough would make me feel better about giving them to my kids. Using the same dough I use for my bread, took half a loaf's worth and rolled it out like I was making sugar cookies. Then I covered with plastic wrap and let them sit in the sun on the table to rise. I then cut sections with a pizza cutter and rolled up cheese and a hotdog (Havarti cheese for me, American for the kids) - baked for 13 minutes. They were delicious and no guilt about eating the dough from a can. As I tell my husband, a few hours ago that flour wasn't even born yet. It was still just wheat in a bag. You can't get any fresher than that.

As for amounts... half a loaf of dough would make about 10 pigs in a blanket. I had way too much dough so I made the rest into crescent rolls in honor of Pillsbury. I've bought a lot of crescent rolls over the years but this might be the end of the line.

Check back tomorrow for my report on my Farmer's Market Stir-fry.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Presentation at Waukee Library

For those of you in the Des Moines area, the Waukee Public Library has a presentation this Saturday, Sept. 25th at 2pm...

Packing Up: Laura Ingalls Wilder's move to Missouri presented by Sarah Uthoff

Mudpies and Hamburger Buns

Today we had 2 new baked goods at our house... a mudpie and hamburger buns. My daughter was so excited to make the mudpie - it was her first. Here is our recipe:

Mud (it was raining so we didn't need to make our own)
Grass
Leaves
Rocks
Freshly Milled Flour (firmed up the pie nicely when it got too watery)

Bake at 300 degrees until firm. Sprinkle pretties on it and wait until Daddy comes home to try to trick him into thinking it is a chocolate pie.

Hamburger Buns: I decided to try making hamburger buns to go with our beef brisket from Costco. I just used my regular bread recipe using freshly milled flour and formed the dough into balls but then I thought maybe they would be too spherical so flattened them a little - balls probably would have been fine (everything is an experiment right now so you can learn from my mistakes). I baked them for 16 minutes and they turned out fantastic. I think I could do 10 buns to a batch of dough so they weren't so big. Everyone seemed to love them and I have now added another thing to my list of things I will now make myself and not buy at the store again. These will be great to put in my son's school lunch since they are easier to handle than the sliced bread.

I will backtrack at some point and talk about the basics of milling but if I try to post everything in a logical order, I'll never get anything posted so just think of this as one of those movies that has lots of flashbacks.

Who is Flour Girl? I am a Christian wife and mom who loves to make my house a home. I don't like housework and my home will never be "Oprah-ready" for that drop-in visit because I will always find something more interesting than cleaning - I do love organizing and even if my house is a mess, I can organize a drawer and all the other messes seem less important. Current passions are milling my own flour, anything Little House on the Prairie, and going to Living History Farms. I am very frugal and have refined garage saling to an art. I also love to find ways to replace overly processed food with more natural ones that are closer to the original packaging God created for us.

Does Flour Girl live on the Prairie? No, I don't but often feel like I do since it is very windy in Iowa and we live where there are very few trees. The prairie reference is for my love of Little House on the Prairie. Our lawn also looks like a prairie right now too.