Carolyn Taylor asks, "Why no popcorn?" All mills are limited in the
hardness of the materials they can grind. To make this clear, if the
material to be ground were harder than the grinding element, the grinding
element would wear very quickly and not much would happen to the material
to be ground. Mills with steel burrs, do not work well with corn. Corn
kernels are hard and break into pieces that tend to jam steel burrs and
overload the driving motors. To grind corn, two types of mill are used:
grist mills and stone mills. Grist mills use tapered plates that cause the
kernels of corn to be broken into smaller pieces as they move toward the
center of the rotating plates and then fall out. The process is relatively
slow but such mills may be operated by hand and are fairly inexpensive.
Stone mills use very hard stones, such as carborundum, to crush and abrade
the kernels to produce meal and flour. These mills range from huge,
waterwheel driven stones, wind driven stones and smaller, electrically
powered stones. Even though the stones are harder than the corn, they do
wear because in the process of grinding, the grain and the millstone abrade
each other. The power required to drive a small stone mill is usually three
to five times greater than that required to drive a steel burr mill.
For our work, we have found the Miracle Mill, which uses stainless steel
grinding burrs to be a very satisfactory solution for many people who are
interested in grinding wheat, rye, beans and most other bread related
ingredients, except corn. Linda Caldwell, (whose name will be known to many
of you) has developed a clever solution to getting corn into bread with her
Miracle Mill. She pops the corn first and then grinds it! It is a simple,
efficient solution. The Miracle Mill is inexpensive ($150, delivered with a
30 day money back guarantee) it is easy to adjust and clean and may be
operated by people with limited physical and mechanical skill. It is
relatively quiet, and does not overheat the grain (although all mills
generate noise and heat because of the work they do).
Incidentally, if you have any questions or would like more information,
please E-mail or call our toll free number: (800) 641-9093.
Irwin/Delta Rehabiliation/Using Zojis