Thursday, December 31, 2009

Ah, hindsight


In the seventies, once we had settled upon each other as life partners, we made a number of careful purchases that reflected our mutually agreed-upon goals. Land, of course, and seed; lumber and hardware and windows and an Aladdin lamp; tools for outdoor work, and tools for indoor work.

One of our indoor tools was a Corona hand-cranked flour mill. Like many others, we were very proud of our mill, as it symbolized for us independence and "self-sufficiency." But, again like many others, we found over time that the self is not sufficient for easily or conveniently making flour at the end of a long day of land-clearing, logging, firewooding, venison butchering, childcare, hand-washing of clothes, construction, bulldozer maintenance, and sock mending. Some things had to give, and so the mill made fewer and fewer appearances on the kitchen counter, and its stand-in, the sack of whole-grain Red Mill flour, became the principal player.

We never sold or gave the mill away, however, and it traveled with us from the Oregon coast range to Pennsylvania and then back to the Willamette Valley, where we reside today. You never know when you might need to make some flour, yes?

And I worked for the University for twenty-two years and never needed to make flour.

So here I am the stay-at-home housewife at last and it's seriously winter and the creek is over its banks and it's dark out there and I need to clean house and I just have no oomph and what's around here to eat, a little tired of potatoes and a little tired of winter squash and don't want cabbage and a little tired of eggs and a little tired of beets and a little tired of rice and chicken broth and I could make spaghetti to cheer me up but don't feel like putting together the sauce and I really shouldn't wipe out the walnuts and what will become of me if I start in on the baker's chocolate and anyway what's in the pantry, and -- oh hey, here's the old Corona mill.

Hm. Probably has less than an hour of use on those steel burrs. So I dig it out and wash it up and dry it on the wood stove and set it up on the kitchen counter.

One problem we had for a decade or so was that the mill, which attaches with a wing-nut bolt, needs more torque applied to the crank than the mill can stand still for without the bolt being first applied to the counter with such force that it will mar the countertop. You can use something to pad it, but the slippage factor is still, well, inconvenient. But our present counter was once a big shop table, made of two-by-fours and four-by-fours, and doesn't mind being modified, so, noticing two slots on the foot of the mill's stand for screws, I hunter-gathered about for a couple of drywall screws and a Phillip's-head screwdriver, and in short order the mill was fixed in place.

The other issue the mill had before was that it didn't make flour so much as it made cracked wheat, even on the tightest setting with which we could still turn the crank. To get flour, it seemed necessary to put the contents of the receiving bowl back through the mill two or three times, which was the real deal-killer for us as would-be bakers on a tight schedule.

But this time what I have on my mind is porridge. Mush. Gruel. Whatever. Hot cereal. Comfort food for sitting right by the wood stove and watching the eternal rains come sheeting down.

I pour in about a cup of wheat berries, half that of barley, half that of rye, and half that of amaranth seeds. And crank away.

The bowl fills reasonably quickly with what I can see at a glance is going to be a perfectly good hot cereal, mixed with boiling water and seasoned with a bit of salt and butter.

And I can see that it's not all cracked grain. Some of it is, but some of it is clearly flour.

Why didn't we, all those years, make cracked wheat and sift it for bread flour? That would have been easy enough, I should think.

Ah, hindsight.

12 comments:

  1. I love that ya'll kept that mill all those years. And now it's making its appearance back in your kitchen.

    Yes, members of my CSA have also commented that sifting their freshly ground flour (with the electric mill at the CSA) helps separate the cereal from the flour. Glad it's going to work for you!

    I picked up a little hand-crank Basic mill at a yard sale. Wait, no, I traded a beading loom for it. (Sheesh, memory...) I'd hate to use it to grind flour for a batch of bread but it makes wonderful steel-cut oats for brekkie!

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  2. Chop an apple into that hot cereal, and I'm there!

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  3. very nice. we have a corona grain mill here, and sold them through our seed catalog for years... but there was some issue with replacement parts, or the factory that makes them, moving to mexico and then not being able to find a factory or anyone willing to build the things.

    so it's good that you kept yours! i haven't ground flour before... i think it's good that i'm moving farther away from refined grains in my diet - less i'll have to grind by hand later! heh.

    do you still remember what it felt like to make those big purchases with your beloved? i've had some moments like those with my lady, in the past year - buying a scythe, and a really nice cooler for life without a refigerator, and being gifted with our camp oven/stove... buying our water filter and our truck (good 'ol sandy). for me it was a giddy feeling, like we were half 'playing' at being adults, and half very seriously and warmly thrilled to be setting out on such a grand journey with one another.

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  4. C: Oats, mmmm.

    H: yes, that was the feeling. And we had access to quality construction that we could not get (on our present budget) now. F'rinstance, as we both regarded backpacking as our prime source of amusement, we outfitted ourselves completely, using Colin Fletcher's The Complete Walker as our guide, from REI. Everything has lasted forever with heavy use. Well, the tent gave out -- but it served us for over a quarter of a century. But our backpacks with outlive us.

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  5. S: Oh, hey, I nearly always do that. Fresh, dehydrated, stored, frozen, or, in a pinch, applesauce!

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  6. Lonni1:40 PM

    Funny--because I didn't read your post until this morning--but late last night I decided that my last act of 2009 would be to bake a loaf of bread. I had some wheat berries which I ground in my electric coffee grinder, a fourth cup at a time. It took until well into 2010 to finish. We had new bread for New Year's breakfast.
    I am looking forward to finding a suitable grain mill somewhere, and someday to growing my own grain.

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  7. Risa, I've been reading you for a while but first time I've left a comment. Nothing really to add -- just wanted you to know that every time I read your blog, something about you makes me want to move in next door. Won't happen, but it's fun to imagine.

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  8. Awww ... I dunno, we're kinda the neighborhood eyesore! :D

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  9. Anonymous9:07 PM

    Maybe that's what I should do! I bought one of the Lehman's best grain mills on Sharon's recommendation and while it DOES do a stellar job of making good flour on the first pass....it takes a good two hours of hard cranking to make enough to make a batch of bread. Hence the electric grain mill purchase. (which I am of two minds about -- LOVE this tool, use it often--but--feel guilty about using it every time)

    My hand crank one also slips, needs frequent tightening, and mars the surface. I haven't found a place yet that I could mount it permanently; if I lose electricity I would need to use it though.

    I'm going to show this post to DH to prove that 'yes, someday we WILL need and use that stuff~! So we're not getting rid of it til you get rid of all the old computer parts!'

    :)
    Susan

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  10. L, The Ingalls used a coffee mill to make Long Winter bread, didn't they? :D

    TTHS: You can put a bit of cloth or rubber (a bit cut out of an abandoned tire tube or bike tire tube will do) above and below the counter and the crank extra tight with a stout pair of pliers on the wing nut bolt head; then it's steady enough.

    An hour? I'm hoping four loaves is a batch, yes?

    When I ran a small bakery, we had a grain silo and a hammermill. Half an hour and it made enough flour for four hundred loaves of bread! 8)

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  11. TTHS, addendum: Make him convert the old computer parts into a bicycle powered grain grinder, blender, and power station! :D

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  12. Well, I don't know about using old computer parts, but a permanent pedal-powered station is part of our long-range plans (when we get our own place). We have the blender but hubby hasn't engineered it for pedal-power yet. And I've put in a request for pedal-power power-generator option. :)

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Stony Run Farm: Life on One Acre