Grain Mills and Home Made Rice Flour

[nickdutch]

There seem to be different ways of making rice flour, and they seem to be for different applications. Common sense would have you believe that you can just grind the rice and hey presto it becomes rice flour, but that is only true in a culinary sense if one is going to cook the flour in a wet environment for a long period of time, E.G., cake, stew or bread making. Try cooking a pancake whose only other ingredient is water with raw uncooked rice and you will see what I mean. The rice can give yo a bad belly.
Some instructions for the creation of rice flour have it that you can soak the rice for 3 – 4 hours, then mash it up in a blender, and then dry the product prior to grinding the dried product. But this seems like a space and time consuming methodology to me. Also, if the rice has a larger surface area when it has already been ground then why does one soak the rice before one has ground it up? It makes no sense.
Some instructions are similar and just have a 15 – 30 minute soaking time and a 15 – 30 minute drying time “in the sun” prior to grinding.
But, some combination of grinding and soaking seems to be somehow important. I have tried grinding the rice (and yes it was a “value” supermarket rice LOL) and then soaking it for about 30 minutes prior to making a thick pancake with the mixture (using baking powder and xanthan gum added to the goo). After the soaking time, the otherwise crunchy rice bits softened and it became more believable that a flat bread could be created. Adding the xanthan gum and the baking powder and mixing well make the whole thing look more batter like and finally it did seem to cook ok on the hob. But, it still somehow seemed a little underdone.
Either cooking the rice completely and drying it, or giving it a longer soaking time after it has been milled seems to be the order of the day. A similar method will probably be needed for making lentil, buckwheat and other types of flour.
I used an electric coffee grinder as my “gain mill”. It worked nicely. Maybe a manual coffee grinder could be a cheaper kind of grain mill then many of the other specialty grain mills that one sees online?

On the basis of experience i don't recommend eating stuff made with uncooked rice unless you have cooked it thoroughly or you have a long soak prior to cooking.

Maybe mill your rice first thing after breakfast, then set it to soak for a few hours so that you can use ti at lunch time?

[jean405]

Hi Nick,
I use rice flour as a face and body scrub (much cheaper and better and eco friendly than anything you can buy), and as a thickener in stews and sauces. You can use it to make rice paper wraps, but it is easier to buy them and they last for ages in storage.

Check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/rice_flour
for different ways to use rice flour. There are other flours you can click on and see how to use as well.

I don't grind it myself, but with trial and error I'm sure you could find the right grinder to make flour, maybe you should invest in a Vita Mix, they are wonderful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_S_t3HjYN8

Jean