A Beginner’s Guide to Milling Flour at Home {Free Chart!}

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Milling flour seems like one of those outdated, old-fashioned skills we don’t need anymore, but every home can benefit from a grain mill! In this post, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know about making flour at home, from choosing the right grains to using your mill (or other kitchen appliances) and more!

For years, I’ve lusted over the grain mills on the kitchen counters of my favorite bloggers and Instagram accounts. Something seemed so timeless about making your own flour, but the sticker shock was a little too much for me. Many quality grain mills are between $200-1,000, so they aren’t exactly cheap, and you don’t want to waste your money on anything low quality since it just won’t last.

A few months ago, Nutrimill gifted me a Harvest grain mill to try out, and since then, I’ve been milling and baking up a storm. There’s definitely a learning curve to working with freshly milled flour, and I realized I needed to break it all down for my readers (especially since I want to share recipes with fresh milled flours, too!).

My goal in this post is to break down everything you need to know from A to Z without telling you too much. To make this post a little easier to navigate, I’m including a table of contents with quick links to different sections. If you find that you need to dig deep into one topic or come back later for more information, they’ll help you jump around.

I’ve also created this quick cheatsheet for milling grains at home that you can print out and stick on your fridge to reference when you need it. It’s not as in-depth as this post, but it’s a nice reference to have at-a-glance!

Best Grain Mill for Home Use

Of course, this post is for home bakers. I don’t know anything about industrial filling or any of that. I’m only knowledgeable about home-milled flour.

In general, there are three main categories of grain mills:

Manual or hand mills

These are the most traditional options and would be right at home in a pioneer kitchen two hundred years ago. These generally attach to a table or counter, and then you either crank or turn the wheel to grind your wheat berries. 

I started with one of these a couple of years ago. I found a secondhand Kornkraft mill on Facebook Marketplace for about $50, which was a steal since they retail for $200-300. It has a little dial you turn to adjust the fineness of the flour. It definitely worked, but this little thing took forever. We could sit there cranking away for hours to make enough flour for a single recipe!

It ended up in a spare closet pretty quickly, but not all manual grain mills are that slow. 

For example, Lehmans sells the gold standard of a manual grain mill called the Diamant Grain Mill. It’s absolutely beautiful and can be yours for the low, low price of $999…

Electric Grain Mills

This is what I have and what I recommend for the average person. No, it will not work in a power outage and, therefore, isn’t great for people who want to be totally off-grid, but they require basically no labor and you can have plenty of freshly milled grains in just seconds.

There are quite a few brands out there, but these are the most popular:

• Nutrimill (I have the Harvest mill, which uses stones to grind the grains, but they also sell impact mills that are more affordable)
• Mockmill
• KoMo Classic
• Wondermill

You can also purchase a grain grinding attachment for your KitchenAid mixer.

When choosing an electric mill, it helps to understand which types of grains it can mill. Stone-ground mills generally only work with non-oily grains like whole wheat berries, rice, etc. They cannot be used with sunflower seeds, peanuts, or other nuts or seeds to make peanut butter or pastes. 

Milling flour without a grain mill

If you don’t have the cash to throw at a regular mill but still want to grind some grains for a quick batch of bread or something, try these:

• High powered blender (I mean high power! Vitamix or Ninja would be good here)
• Spice or coffee grinder
• Food processor (in some cases)

The challenge is that you cannot control the fineness of the grind, but they work in a pinch.

Best Grains for Milling Flour

Have you ever seen wheat berries for sale at your local bulk store? I used to buy emmer or farro at health food stores to cook for grain bowls and such. When you mill your own flour, you’re always starting with whole grains, like the whole berries I mentioned, but you don’t want to use just any ol’ berry.

It’s essential to choose berries suited for the type of recipe you want to make. 

Although there are many, many, many types of wheat out there, let’s keep this simple. If you only want to buy two types of grains, start with these:

• Soft White Wheat – standard white flour for everyday baking (pastries, chocolate chip cookies, waffles, muffins) as they are lower in protein and gluten.
• Hard White Wheat – great, mild-tasting option for breads and doughs due to their higher protein content and gluten. This is closest to white bread flour but still contains all the bran.

Just because the flours about are white, don’t think they’re the same as the bleached flour from the store. They’re still whole wheat flour and will act like whole wheat in recipes.

Want to take it a step further? Grab these as well:

• Soft Red Wheat – stronger, nuttier flavor and great for everyday baking (cookies, scones, muffins, etc); also great for cooking whole to add to salads.
• Hard Red Wheat – classic whole wheat flavor and ideal for breads and doughs. Think of this as your whole wheat bread flour.

You can also grind durum wheat, rye, einkorn, and other whole wheat berries. Azure has some specialty sprouted berries, like red fife and emmer, but I stick with the regular organic grains to avoid taking up my entire pantry with wheat berries!

Note: Most grain mills can process other types of grains like rice, oats, barley, and more. Be sure to read your manufacturer’s information first to avoid damaging your machine.

Is it cheaper to mill your own flour?

Yes and no. Compared to regular white bleached flour at the store, milling your own flour doesn’t make sense financially. You can often find conventional white flour for 50 cents per pound. However, organic flour is much more expensive, and freshly milled flour is nearly a luxury item due to the high price tag.

Compare these prices from Azure:

• Hard white wheat berries are $64.22 for 50 lbs ($1.28 per pound).
• Organic whole white wheat bread flour is $75.95 for 50 lbs ($1.52 per pound). 

The price difference is minimal, but the freshness cannot be compared. Wheat berries will last for a very long time, while the flour needs to be used within about 6 months to a year.

I’ve seen freshly milled organic whole wheat for closer to $3-5/lb, which is significantly more expensive.

How to Store Freshly Milled Flour

After milling, I generally like to keep my fresh flour in an airtight container in the fridge. Since the whole grains include the germ, they tend to go bad faster than store-bought stuff. You can absolutely keep it at room temperature for a few days but I like to just pop it in the fridge.

• Try to use it within about a week for maximum freshness.
• Keep it in an airtight container to avoid absorbing any smells.

I’ve created an entire post about the best supplies for home milling! It goes even more in depth about the products I use, where I get them, and why I love them.

Baking with Fresh Milled Flour

 If you have some baking experience, switching to fresh flour won’t be too big of a change. However, it’s definitely not the same as using regular all purpose flour.

First, fresh milled flour contains every part of the wheat berry, including the coarse outer layer that is normally removed from regular all purpose.

It’s also extremely absorbent and requires more water than regular recipes (generally about 10-15% more).

Sometimes, you’ll need to add extra add-ins (like sunflower lecithin, ascorbic acid, vital wheat gluten, etc) or change your technique (tangzhong method!) to improve texture and flavor.

The autolyse stage is key. You generally need to let the flour sit in water – without the yeast or sourdough starter – to hydrate. Some fresh milled recipes call for a long, occasionally overnight autolyse, so follow your recipe to a T!

For some bread recipes, it’s best to sift out the bran, let it autolyse, then add it back in for texture and fiber.

I recommend milling your flour as fine as possible, as this is ideal for most baking purposes. If your flour is not fine enough, mill it again until it is!

You’ll also typically need to knead the dough for a bit longer than regular store-bought flour. 

Feel free to play around with cracking wheat or other grains by grinding them quickly on a coarse setting.

Measure out a little more of the wheat berries than you need to compensate for the small amounts that are lost in the milling process.

If you want a softer, more tender flour, sift out the bran and germ (and save it for bran muffins or other recipes).

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