Introducing The Wonder Mill. I am about to tell you why everyone should have a Wonder Mill in their kitchen. I realize that not everyone is freaky like I am about all things kitchen, but after this post you just may change your mind. In one of my recent posts “Organic Anyone” I shared how my family and I have made strides to be 95% Organic with our food and cleaning products. With that leap, came major changes. Let’s take a jog off this Wonder Mill path for a moment.
Have you ever read some of the labels on the food you purchase, like bread, tortillas, corn meal mixes, etc.? I challenge you next time you are grocery shopping, to spend a little extra time doing just that. Let’s start with bread. Most bread, including Honey Whole Wheat Non High Fructose Corn Syrup, has a mile long list of ingredients in it. MOST of which are “extra” fillers that bread actually doesn’t need but to preserver freshness, those ingredients are added. Here’s what SHOULD be in your bread. Wheat Flour, Oil (olive oil pref) Honey, Water, Egg (opt), Salt, and Yeast. Yep….. that’s IT! If you go to a health food grocery store like Whole Foods, and purchase organic healthy bread, you will be between $6.00 and $8.00 per loaf! And if your like my family, who eats sandwiches every day for lunch, and that’s with teenagers and a husband, it can break the bank! How about corn meal? Have you read what’s in the package of corn meal mix? For starters, the corn is usually a GMO corn, and there is all thing “enriched” added. And in most corn meal packages all you have to do is add liquid ingredients and egg. Why would you want to “enrich” corn meal? Here’s what a basic recipe for corn bread should contain. Corn Meal (plain ground corn) Flour, Salt, Baking Soda, Olive Oil, Egg, Honey, & Milk. Once again that’s it! No other ingredients.
Here’s where the Wonder Mill comes into play. Have you ever seen Coconut Flour, Chickpea Flour, Rice Flour? Those are unusual flours but are becoming quite the rave these days, especially with many Americans realizing that the foods we purchase at grocery stores, are loaded full of CRAP! I have a friend, who mind you has 8 kids, no joke….. Age 14 and under. She invited me to come to her house to learn how to grind wheat berries into flour and make home-made bread. I was intrigued to say the least, after all she has 8 kids and does this!!!!!!
So we took some wheat berries that looked like what’s posted above, with the Hard Red Wheat Berries on the left and the Hard White on the right. Fired up the Wonder Mill, and within 1 minute or less we had 4.5 cups of wheat flour! I was SOLD! Now to convince hot hubs that we needed this work horse in our kitchen. To sell him fully on the product, I of course took home a home-made loaf of delicious bread. One bite and he was hooked! Here’s how we figured out the savings we would have over a years time if we stopped buying store-bought bread and made our own with freshly milled wheat. The initial cost for the Wonder Mill was $239, and we would be using it to grind many grains not just wheat berries. The cost of a healthy loaf of bread on average is $6.00, and to the cost to make it at home is about .50 cents per loaf! I won’t bore everyone with our budget chart, but being my husband is very analytical, he crunched the numbers and said it was well worth it!
As I mentioned before, we grind more than just wheat berries. You can grind your own corn meal by simply grinding “popping corn” via the Wonder Mill and voila!!!!! Freshly ground corn meal ready to go. Chickpeas, Rice, Black Beans, etc. There are three settings on the Wonder Mill that you can choose from. The Pastry Setting for flours used to bake with, The Bread Setting for bread flour, and Course for things like corn meal. We stopped buying store-bought buns, bread, and rolls and let me tell you…. Once you go home-made, you never go back! Below are some hot dog buns we made recently, and boy were they amazing!!!!! Needless to say they didn’t last long in our house!
Organic Sport Chic 