To Mill Or Not To Mill?

[mamatoblessings]

So we are venturing into the gluten free zone after recieving positive tests for 4 of my family members. I'm just starting into my pricing "research" and was wondering what the opinion is about milling your own flour and what's a good mill for your money if you do mill your own. If it will save me money I would absolutely do it, but if it's not going to, then I probably won't mess with it, at least at this point with having to learn so many new things anyway. Thanks so much for any advice you can offer on the subject.

[MNBeth]

Well, I took the plunge, but I'm still on the fence about whether it was worth it. There are a few things I've seen, though.

Brown rice flour is definitely a LOT cheaper to mill from cheap brown rice than to buy. I don't think the flour from my mill is quite as fine as Authentic Foods brown rice flour, which is the best, from what I've read. So far, though, that hasn't been a problem for me. I don't use as much rice flour as I thought I would, so it's working in the quantities I'm using. I also mill sweet brown rice, and that's nice because I the sweet rice flour I find at the store is always white rice, and I prefer to use as much whole grain as possible.

I also do millet, and since I can get whole millet from the bulk bins at the natural foods store (where there's nothing gluteny in bins above or adjacent to it), that's cheaper for me than buying the flour. What I'm finding I use most, though, is sorghum flour, and so far I haven't found a local source of whole sorghum. If I order it, the shipping cost negates the savings from buying the whole grain. So I have a mill, but the flour I use the most of I still have to buy packaged. If I could get into a natural foods buying club where I could order whole sorghum (and millet) in bulk w/o paying exhorbitant shipping, I think I'd be set.

I bought a NutriMill because I was under the impression that it would mill slightly finer than the Wonder Mill, but I regret it. I don't like the design of the NutriMill at all. It's too hard to get the flour bin correctly locked in, and impossible to really see that it's correctly locked in. And it's SLOW, at least compared to the Whisper Mill I used to have. (The Whisper Mill company went out of business. The Wonder Mill is basically the same mill - made in the same factory, even.) And I don't find the flour to be any finer than I used to get with my Whisper Mill. If I had it to do over again, I'd definitely go with the Wonder Mill.

[happygirl]

Doesn't really discuss milling, so to speak, but has an interesting analysis that might help you. Open Original Shared Link