This post is going to be about milling and flour.  It's been a while since the last time I wrote about my flour mill, so I will give a bit of history about my flour mill.  My mill came from a grist mill in southern Missouri that was established sometime in the late 1800's.  It was located on a small river that fed into Pomme de Terre river.  In the 1950's a dam was built and it became Pomme de Terre lake, and that location was flooded and became part of the lake.  The owner of the mill saved the mill parts, and passed them on to his grandson.  The grandson sold the mill to a fellow who was going to make moonshine, but then never quite got around to it, and made the mill available on Craigslist, which is when I bought it, about eight years ago.

This is my Nordyke & Marmon mill, made around 1900.

The case is made of cast iron.  The stones are called French buhr.  That is because they were quarried in France, in a stone quarry near Paris.  It is a volcanic stone, very hard.  It is a porous stone, so it's got lots of little holes in it.  The reason it was so valuable for millstones was because of its hardness.  It came out of the stone quarry in small pieces, so it had to be fitted together like the pieces of a pie, or the pieces of a pizza, and then an iron band was put around the outside to hold the pieces tightly together.

This is not my mill, but another N & M mill stone just like mine.  This is the "runner" stone.  It has to be carefully balanced, as it turns at 1,000 rpm.

You can see from looking at the face of the mill stone that the stone is very porous, not smooth, like limestone would be.  Also, you can see the "grooves" that have been cut into the face of the stone.  That is where the grain gets caught and ground between the two stones.  Both stones are cut the same way, so that when you put the two faces facing each other, the grooves are going opposite directions, kind of like scissors.  The grooves get shallower as they get closer to the outside edge of the stone, so that the flour gets ground finer and finer as it gets closer to the outside of the stone.

This is the bedstone.  Again, this isn't mine, but is just like mine.

By looking closely, you can just make out the grooves on the face of the bedstone.  You can see that they do go in the same direction as the "runner" stone, in the photo, above.  The bedstone is the one that is fixed in position in the front of the mill.  The grain falls from the hopper at the top of  the mill into the "shoe" which shakes by the vibration of the shaft of the mill.  That shakes the grain down into the funnel down through a hole in the center of the bedstone.  An auger on the center of the mill shaft then grabs the grain and pulls it into the middle of the mill.  Grain falls between the stones by gravity and is caught between the grooves of the runner stone, which is turning at about 1,000 rpm, and the bedstone, which is stationary.

The flour is coming out of the chute into the bin.

Once the flour reaches the outside of the stone, there are metal fingers that grab the flour and throw it around to the chute and out the chute into the bin.  The flour is warm, as it gets scrubbed between the grindstones.  You don't want it to get too hot, because that cooks the flour before you use it, and then it's no good for making bread.  Also, you don't want to burn the grindstones, or wear them prematurely.  So you have to check the temperature of the flour as it is coming out of the chute, making sure it is warm, checking to see that it is the correct fineness, but not too hot, and checking to be sure there is no odor of burning grindstones, that is, the smell of hot flint.  That is where the saying comes from "keep your nose to the grindstone."

I run my mill with a 15 hp Farmall tractor.

We take our mill to our friends' farm once a year to do a demonstration of flour milling.  I grind about 50 lb. of wheat into whole wheat flour.  I give most of it away to family and friends who like to use it to make whole wheat bread, and then the rest I use myself for making my own whole wheat bread.  This is the real stuff, whole wheat, not like the stuff you buy in the store.  It's got everything in it, including the wheat germ.  The stuff you buy in the store has the germ taken out because that is oily and it would go rancid sitting on the shelf in the store.  I keep mine in the freezer to keep it from going rancid.  Then I have to warm it up to room temperature before I use it for baking bread.