Best Supplies for Home Milling: Grain Mills, Grains, and More

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If you want to mill your own flour at home, you’ll need a little bit more than the standard kitchen. From buying the right whole grains, sourcing a grain mill, and keeping everything fresh, these are my favorite supplies for home milling!

Fortunately, one advantage of milling flour at home is that there are a lot of things you can use that you already have, like mixing bowls, storage containers, and more. Most of us have loaf pans and muffin tins, so that’s all set!

The extra cost comes from getting the mill (one-time cost) and sourcing your favorite whole grains (recurring cost). You can easily scale this up or down, depending on your budget. 

If you want to get started milling your own grains today with an electric mill, you can start as inexpensively as about $150-250 or you can go wild and splurge over $1,000. I’ll break down some options for you to make it simple!

Best Grain Mill for Home Milling

Unless you are living off-grid and need something manual, electric mills are the most convenient for everyday use. They sit on the counter (or stashed away in the cupboard) and you can mill so much flour in just a few seconds.

There are quite a few options out there, which makes things a little overwhelming. Personally, I have a Nutrimill Harvest mill, and it’s been a great fit. It uses stones to grind the flour, so it’s a little noisy, but very powerful.

Nutrimill has several different options for electric grain mills, including stone mills and impact bills, depending on your budget. 

There are lots of other brands out there, and one of the most prominent is Mockmill. Although I have not used any of their mills, they are also well-rated but tend to cost more than Nutrimill.

You can also get yourself an old-school hand-crank grain mill if you want to bake off-grid. Some of them are cheaper, but be aware that you’ll need to spend some time cranking to get enough for a loaf of whole wheat bread.

Best Stand Mixer for Whole Grain Flour

Unless you’re just using your freshly milled flour for muffins or cookies, your standard KitchenAid or hand mixer won’t necessarily be enough. 

As a long-time KitchenAid user, I did not want to hear this! I loved my little Artisan mixer, but it ended up walking off the counter (and crashing into the floor) while trying to knead dough. 

Last year, I decided to upgrade my mixer and get something that could withstand all the baking I do.

After lots and lots and lots of comparison shopping, watching videos, and reviewing, I ended up purchasing a 7-quart KitchenAid Pro-Line mixer. 

Now, this is not just the regular 7-quart. This one has a DC motor and over 1 horsepower of mixing power! It came with a 5-year warranty and is one of the strongest options they have.

Unfortunately, they discontinued the line. The next closest option is their professional line, which retails between $800-1,000.

KitchenAid itself has stated that their mixers are not the best choice for bread as the intense kneading process can burn out the motor. Although you can likely use your current mixer to make bread, be aware that you will likely need to knead much slower and give the motor breaks. 

My Pro-Line has been great for bread so far, but I can only knead on Level 2 to avoid voiding the warranty (and burning out the motor).

The alternative is to start with a mixer that is made for whole grain flour!

Bosch is owned by the same company as Nutrimill, and their Universal Plus mixers are made specifically for bread. You can use them for everything else, but bread kneading is really where they shine.

The Bosch Universal Plus mixer can handle up to 14 pounds of whole grain flour in one batch, making it a star for home bakers who really want to specialize in making sandwich bread, loaves, and more. 

Fortunately, the price is much less than I paid for my KitchenAid, and it’s still on the market.

Best Grains for Home Milling

I talked about this quite a bit in my Beginner’s Guide to Milling Flour, but let’s go deeper. In the post, I shared a few of my favorite sources or where I would look for different grains. Personally, this is what I actually buy.

You can mill many different types of grains, including everyday wheat, ancient grains, and more:

• White wheat (closest to regular white flour; comes in soft or hard wheat)
• Red wheat (has a nutty flavor like traditional whole wheat flour; comes in soft or hard)
• Spelt
• Kamut
• Einkorn
• Emmer
• Rye

I’ve even seen people mill corn for cornmeal, rice for rice flour, and more! There are truly so many options that you can use with just one tool. 

I have a cheat sheet to help you keep track of the 4 main types of whole wheat grains here, and it goes into depth about when to use each one. Very handy!

There are many places to order whole wheat berries, but I’m all about Azure Standard, and love, love, love that I can buy my whole grains there! I simply add them to my cart like normal, then pick them up at my next delivery. 

Since they sell whole wheat berries in several package sizes, I can either start small with a 5 lb bag or go big with a 25 lb bag. Easy!

Personally, I usually have the:

• Soft white wheat berries
• Hard white wheat
• Hard red wheat berries

I will note that of the different grains that I purchased from them, there were sometimes pieces of wheat stalk that I needed to pick out before milling. It’s a little bit annoying, but not terrible. This was only with one pack of wheat (soft white) and the others have all been great!

You can also source whole grains from Nutrimill itself (they sell Palouse grains), Amazon, Pleasant Hill Grain, and more.

You may even be able to find local farmers growing grains for sale! We’ve been having a resurgence of grain growing here in Western Washington (probably thanks to the amazing Bread Lab at WSU), although I’m still trying to source those berries myself.

I’ve only tried Azure’s grains and dried beans from Palouse (which were great, so I have to imagine the wheat berries are too), and I plan on sticking with the organic grains from Azure going forward. They have so many options…it’s more than enough for my purposes. 

Storage Containers for Wheat Berries

The great thing about whole wheat berries is how long they last! Unlike store-bought flour, which goes rancid within 6 months to a year, whole wheat berries can last for years. But, that all depends on proper storage. 

You need an airtight container and a cool, dry place at room temperature. You can also freeze the berries, but they can fill up your freezer pretty fast!

Personally, I’ve been using glass mason jars since I have many on hand. The half-gallon jars from Azure are a great size for 5 lb bags, and they store on the shelf very nicely.

For larger size bags (25 lbs), you’ll want to switch to food-safe buckets. You can get a 5-gallon bucket and gamma seal lid on Azure, which will keep your grains fresh for a long, long time. 

Storing Fresh Milled Flour

The thing about fresh home-milled flour is that it can go rancid or lose its nutritional content quickly unless used immediately or stored properly. 

I recommend either:

1. Use your freshly milled flours right away (mill while you’re preparing the ingredients for your recipe) OR
2. Refrigerate the flour in a glass jar for about a week

The refrigerator will help keep the oils in the flour from going bad, giving you a little more time to make your pizza dough or chocolate chip cookies. 

Baking Supplies & Equipment for Freshly Milled Flour

Once you have your electric grain mill and a stash of whole grains to play with, it’s time to get baking!

There are a few things to consider when purchasing, but you can source many of these secondhand or make do with other things you have on hand. 

Fresh yeast – This is key! Whole wheat flour is heavy and needs strong yeast to lift it up.

Make sure your yeast is fresh and store it in the fridge or freezer to keep it that way. I use the instant yeast from Azure Standard and just store it in a mason jar in the fridge. Easy. 

Dough whisk – I have many, many mixing bowls and love to make sourdough bread and other doughs in them! But if you want to make any bread or dough by hand, traditional whisks pretty quickly get full of dough you have to pluck out.

Dough whisks have an open design that makes it easier to stir thick doughs without everything getting stuck. I grabbed mine at a local shop, but you can also find nice ones on Amazon. 

Parchment paper – I use both silicone mats and parchment paper and always keep them on hand. Very convenient and they simplify clean-up quite a bit.

Baking pans – Some people swear by stoneware baking dishes, but I’ve just never been a big fan. I usually use aluminum, stainless steel, or cast iron. 

If you want to bake loaves of whole grain bread, keep it simple with a couple different bread pans. Prefer sandwich bread? Splurge on a nice quality pullman loaf pan for that classic square-shaped slice.

For deluxe artisan-style loaves, get a Dutch oven (around 6 qt size) or splurge on Challenger bread pan.

Most importantly, I recommend that you start with what you have. You don’t need to go wild and spend a small fortune on supplies! Check your local thrift store, see what you can find on Marketplace, then grab whatever you need when you need it. Save your money; let it be simple. 

Hopefully this helps you know what you need (and what you don’t!) I’ll continuously update this post with different product suggestions and details to make sure it’s a great resource for years to come. Happy Milling!