Testing Out the Mill

I got my mill yesterday.  To say that I was excited would be an understatement.  I couldn't get it out of the box fast enough or read through the instructions any more quickly, but I did take some pictures along the way.

Here 'she' is!  Hmm...quiet design.  That was about to be tested.

When I first turned it on, just to get an idea, all 3 of the girls instantly had their hands over their ears.  It sure was loud.  In defense of the mill, I didn't have the lid on top or the collecting bowl beneath it.  The directions said to run 2 cups of berries through to kind of 'clean' it out from packaging.

So, I ran the wheat berries through.  You put them in the 'hopper' on top and put the lid on and away you go!

It doesn't take very long for the berries to run through.  After doing my first 2 cups, I ran 6 more cups through to get an idea of a couple different things.  #1--I didn't want to do the full 13 cups that I could do, but enough to give it a good work out.  #2--I wanted to see if the ratio was correct *1 cup of berries = 1 1/2 cups of flour.* 

When it is milling, the noise isn't any worse than me running the vacuum cleaner.  As it got to the end of the milling process, it was a bit louder than my vacuum.  After it finished, I pulled out my flour.

I measured it out into a 1 gallon size, freezer ziploc bag.  I put 6 cups of berries in and got 9 cups of flour.  If you multiply that out, you are in fact getting the 1:1 1/2 ratio that I had heard about.  The last test was to figure out the number of cups of berries in a pound.
After hubby and I got home from our date last night, I did some more figuring.  One pound of wheat berries measures out to 2 1/4 cups of berries.  Based on the above ratio, you would end up with 3.375 cups of flour.  After running the 1 pound of berries through and measuring it, I had 3 2/3 cups + a couple of tablespoons.  When I weighed my flour, I had 1 pound of flour.  The moral of this story, I need to start weighing my flour for recipes instead of using a measuring cup.  I have read that it's better to weigh your flour, but I've always been skeptical of this.  We'll have to give that a whirl too!

The first loaf of bread I made caved on me.  It's still good to eat though.  The bottom of the loaf is good for sandwiches and the top is good for toast.  The second loaf I made looks a bit more pretty.  I did measure my ingredients using measuring cups/spoons.  I do have to say that by using fresh milled flour, my loaf is mighty happy.

This was my second loaf.  Yes, it really is that tall *if you know bread makers, this is fairly common.*  I cut the loaf in half *from top to bottom* and it gives us two loaves instead of one.

I'd also like to make a straight whole wheat loaf.  I may even try out some of the recipes that were in the users manual.  So far, we're really happy with it.

We'll have plenty of new adventures with our new mill.  We'll be having plenty of pancakes and nummy things in the next few weeks.  The girls will be my test subjects. :)