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What You Need Besides the Mill

Updated 2026-11-04

Once the mill is on the way, it is easy to overspend on extras. Here is what earns its place.

Buy these

A digital kitchen scale. Fresh flour varies by volume, so grams give you repeatable results. Look for 1 g precision and a tare button. Search kitchen scales

Wheat berries for what you bake. Hard wheat for bread, soft wheat for pastry. Our guide to wheat berries explains the difference. Start with small bags.

Airtight storage. Utah State University Extension recommends moisture-proof, food-grade packaging such as buckets or Mylar bags. See how to store wheat berries. Search food-grade buckets

A soft brush. Handy for clearing flour dust from around the mill. Follow your maker's cleaning instructions, especially for stone mills, which often should not be washed.

Consider these later

A fine sieve. Useful if you want a lighter flour for pastry, by sifting out some of the bran. Search fine sieves

A dough whisk or bench scraper. Whole grain dough is sticky, and these make it easier to handle. Search bench scrapers

A bake log. Tracking grain, grind, water and result is the fastest way to improve, because so many factors change at once with fresh flour.

Skip these for now

• Large bulk grain orders, until you know which wheat you like.
• Oxygen absorbers for short-term storage. The Extension says they are mainly useful against insects.
• A second mill for coarse grinding, until your first shows you what you are missing.

Your first bake

Replace 25% of the flour in a recipe you already know well. Use the recipe converter and change nothing else. You will have a baseline, and each later bake teaches you more.