Milling Your Own Flour?

[Ingrid517]

Hi there,

Hello,

I'm new to the forums, and Celiac's disease. I just got diagnosed via endoscopy 2 weeks ago. Have been gluten free since then. Starting to feel better and notice a difference. This has probably been going on for over 5 years easily.

I'm an avid baker, and I'm fortunate enough to have a gluten free bakery/market in our town. The thing is, the price per quantity of the baking flours is hard to bare. I've considered getting my own flour miller. I have read good reviews about this one.

Open Original Shared Link

It mills all sorts of the common gluten free ingredients. Brown rice flour seems to be a big one, it seems like it would be so much more economical to make my own. I've read reviews that it mills the rice just as fine as the bagged brand competitors!

I'm just about sold on the idea of it, seems like a good investment for the amount of money I could save. I can't figure out how I'd do cassava root though. Isn't that what makes tapioca flour? That seems to be one of the most popular gluten free flours. I don't know where you buy it, or if it would work. I assume it has to be dried. I also heard cassava root is the same as yuca root? Does anyone know if that is true? Same with sorghum, it says sorghum works, but I don't know where you buy that either!

[GFinDC]

I don't know where you live so don't know if this helps. I bought some tapioca flour (Goya brand) and rice flour (Cuzcutlan brand) at a local (DC) Giant grocery store recently. I also got some teff flour and garbanzo bean flour at an Ethiopian grocery. It wasn't real expensive. I haven't tried the Asian grocery yet but I understand some of them carry rice flour also.

I have an old Hobart grinder that I use to make green pea, yellow pea and lentil flour in sometimes. Works fine for that. There a ton of different grinders available, definitely good to take your time on picking one out. Reading lots of reviews would be good too. Be prepared for lots of dust when grinding your own!

[MagpieWrites]

I HAVE that mill!

Works great - has zipped through brown rice down to a fine powder, beat garbonzo beans to dust, and pushed out some of the tastiest millet flour you can imagine.

I can't tell you about making the starches, so far I've stuck to the flours, but when it comes to beating the sticker shock, I can't say enough good things. There is also something wonderful about freshly ground flours. They taste so much better - nuttier almost. I still buy potato starch, tapioca, and cornstarch - but the first two I have found remarkably cheap at the local Asian market (32 oz bag of potato starch for $2.89 and the tapioca is $0.79 a pound - both less that a quarter of what the health food store was charging) and the cornstarch costs me about $0.69 a pound a the local discount grocery. I also am so fully stocked up on sorghum that it will be a while before I need to buy any more - the closest store to me that sold Bob's Red Mill products decided to pull the whole line because they weren't selling enough and marked it all down by 50%-75%! Makes me crazy that I'll have to either trek two towns over to buy it or order on line... but was rather nice to be able to stock the pantry! I HAVE milled sorghum (got a bag to try from a fellow celiac friend) and it goes wonderfully through the mill.

If you have the ability to get the mill - I can't recommend it enough. Brown rice is cheap in bulk - but the flour? Ridiculous what some stores charge! It mills it nice and powdery (the variable settings are wonderful) - there IS a tiny bit of grit in the finished product, but less than what you will get in even commercial grades. Its the nature of the best to have a tiny bit. One way I've found to cut around that little snag is to let my baking batters and doughs sit for a while in the fridge. It lets them both firm up a bit before going into the oven AND hydrates the rice so that the texture is much smoother. Even without using it for starches, it has saved me a bundle. I figured out not too long ago that 5 months I've had mine - its paid for itself and beyond.

A couple things? The temptation is to grind HUGE amounts at one go. Try to resist that. Brown rice has a shorter shelf life than white (well. Let's be honest. White rice - if kept dry and free from bugs could outlast US.) and brown rice flour has an even shorter. I try to only grind as much as I'll need for a week or two and keep the rest for later. (It also means I have more options. Once ground - its only use is in baking. Before that... well. Brown rice for dinner!) Same deal with beans - dried and stored on the pantry shelf - survives like King Tut. Ground? The clock is ticking. Grind what you need, save the rest. It's also LOUD! Pick up a set of earplugs and if you have any pets... be prepared for some pissy furries! Cleaning is also a bit of a time suck. After using my mill for a while now, I have gotten into the habit of laying down an old tablecloth (rice flour is a pain to get out of cracks and crannies) and milling all my grains I'll need for the week (or two) at one go. I don't personally care if a tsp of brown rice flour gets into my millet flour, or if some of the garbonzo bean flour mixes in with the oats. I've not noticed any weird tastes, things bake fine... so I grind, package, grind the next, repeat until done... and than clean the whole shebang. It isn't hard to clean - just a bit... cumbersome and a new toothbrush is your best friend to get all the bits cleared out.

Hope this helps at least a bit.

[Reba32]

I have a coffee grinder and I make almond flour with it.

I don't use rice flour or any of those other incredibly high carb flours, so the coffee grinder works great for nut flours.

[dilettantesteph]

I grind my own flour and it is a lot less expensive. I am also very sensitive and that way I can make sure that my grains are clean before milling. I wanted to be able to grind corn too, and a lot of them won't do that. I decided on a hand cranked grain mill. The country living grain mill. I like it, but hand cranking isn't for everyone.

When it arrived, they had ground some wheat in it to show how well it worked! I wasn't happy to open that package and have that in my gluten free home. They sent me a new one. They used rice to demonstrate that one. I wish that I had taken it apart and cleaned it before use. It took a lot of grinding before I could get uncontaminated flour out of it.

I hope you enjoy your grinding and baking. I've been doing natural yeast sourdough.

[RiceGuy]

As was stated, Asian markets have some flours far cheaper than the health food stores. No, you can't make tapioca flour from cassava root. That'd be cassava flour. The starch would need to be extracted in order to get tapioca flour, which is the same as tapioca starch. But, if you can find the tapioca pearls cheap enough, those should be fairly easy to grind up, and then you'd have the powdered starch. Some tapioca pearls do have other ingredients added though, so check the labels to make sure it's ok for you.

When I looked into grinding my own flours, I couldn't find the grains or beans cheap enough to make it worth the cost of the mill. But, I did get a coffee grinder to do a few things, and it works well for making buckwheat flour from the whole groats. Tried it on sorghum and some others, and it just can't get it fine enough. Works great for spices though!

Best price I've seen for sorghum grain is in bulk, from Open Original Shared Link.