I’m having a problem milling corn for polenta on my Mockmill Pro 100 (want to try making polenta bread with cooked polenta). Or, maybe I don’t have a problem and what’s happening is normal! I have organic yellow corn purchased from Azure.
I’ve experimented a lot with different settings. But after cooking, it still has husk particles that are unpleasant to eat, reminding me of popcorn (although smaller). I’ve never had this problem with store-bought polenta (uncooked). I even tried a level that was not very coarse. In the end, I took all the samples I experimented with and milled them on the finest setting to get corn flour. But I have two batches of cooked polenta in the fridge that I fear won’t get eaten.
Could the corn I’m using be the problem?
So, my question is: For those of you who have milled corn for polenta, what are your results like? Do you have husk particles? Thanks!
My only experience milling corn is with a Mockmill 100 and is limited to grinding sweet corn to make polenta. I, too, got the “fluff” (as I call it) with the milled corn. (Milled on setting #10, with the stones just start to clatter at setting #0.) Nothing like the fluff I get is in store-bought polenta.
I looked at the Azure website, it does not say what kind of corn it is. The description indicates re-hydrating to use in soups, leading me to think you have sweet corn, too. I was thinking the ground corn had to be winnowed, but on re-thinking it, the weight of the corn is probably too light to do that. Perhaps through a sieve? When I made the corn+fluff polenta, the fluff disappeared. I do not know where it went, I guess we ate it. I think/hope the fluff is a byproduct of milling only sweet corn.
I believe corn flour is made from dent corn. The polenta you buy in a grocery store is made from flint corn, not sweet corn. Last year we grew sweet corn, so that is the only corn I have been putting though the Mockmill, so far. This year, we are growing a small patch of red flint corn specifically to make polenta. Next year I will know if it is possible to milling fluff free flint corn, or if I need a screen (what hole size?) to winnow the polenta.
If you get a chance to mill either dent corn or flint corn, please post back here with results.
@Otis. Thanks, this definitely gives me some useful information. Now that I think of it, when I first got my Mockmill, I bought a small amount of corn, in bulk, no idea what kind, and I remember I milled polenta and cornmeal with no problem and with no husk (fluff) that I noticed. So maybe what I have is indeed sweet corn as you suggested. However, it does have a dent. Or does all corn have some sort of dent? Anyway, I’m going to try to buy more of the bulk stuff just to see. Also, I will add that the cooked polenta I ended up with is far from the nice yellow it should be; it’s sort of a dull, unappetizing off-white. I might also write to Azure to ask what kind of corn it is.
I did write Azure to ask about the variety of their Organic Yellow corn. They didn’t know the variety except to say it wasn’t dent corn. In the meantime, I bought some polenta and will use that. I’m not sure what to do with the four pounds of corn I have left!