Hand mill MH 8

The heart of the grain mill is the millstone.

Based on experience and full conviction, we decided in 2016 to manufacture mills exclusively with granite grinding stones extracted from nature under the name Salzburger Getreidemühlen. The decisive factor for this decision was the convincing features:

• Extreme longevity: Our granite grindstones often provide excellent service for 30 to 40 years with the factory cut and can be reground by us for a second, equally long life. You can no longer make higher demands on the durability of a product.
• Almost unbreakable: We are not aware of any breakage of the grindstone or parts breaking off. Our granite millstones can even withstand the grinding of small stones that may be present in the grain, thus protecting your teeth. We are therefore happy to provide a lifetime guarantee* on our natural stones (*see guarantee conditions)
• Granite is perfect by nature: without any artificial binders or additives, granite stone is a pure and natural material with ideal properties for grinding grain. Environmentally friendly and sustainable, granite is the only right choice for us.

The flour of natural stones can hardly be described in words… Airy, powdery, velvety, soft. These words are not enough. You have to feel the flour between your fingertips. Flour that you buy pre-packaged in the store is divided into types and produced using standardized processes. Grind your own flour with an original Salzburg grain mill and experience the differences and special characteristics of the flour in the bowl that collects your flour under the spout. How it piles up into flour cones and slides off, how it can be shaken or later behaves during kneading, unfolds during baking and ultimately reveals itself in its outstanding taste. The words of experienced bakers count for more than industry standards.

“That’s the only way to make it – with the flour from my Salzburg wife”, a farmer’s wife from Upper Austria told us at an exhibition, who always bakes a very special cake for her small community for the harvest festival. And you could literally see the pride in her eyes.

From granite block to millstone:

Our granite stones, each pair individually, are carefully and patiently matched and worked with manual skill. The production of our millstones begins with a millstone blank, which is given the basic shape of the grinding surfaces and perfect concentricity. This is followed by several uncompromising optimization steps in which perfection is worked out through grinding tests, renewed expansion and regrinding in order to achieve the desired fineness of the flour and grinding performance. It is a matter of experience and something very individual which shape the expert gives the stone until hard and bulky grains such as rice or chickpeas are ground just as finely as rye and wheat. It’s almost like building a musical instrument, where several paths usually lead to an outstanding result. Now you understand the effort required to transform the granite blocks extracted from the quarry into small, round, perfectly balanced millstones. And how simple it is to industrially produce artificial grinding stones made of corundum ceramic, pressed into shape using a chemical binder, in a high-temperature furnace.

Each pair of stones is unique!

Our search for the right granite for our mills began over 40 years ago. Even in our early days, in the pioneering days of the 1970s, we set out in search of “the stone”. We searched for years in Austria, Germany and throughout Europe and examined the advantages and disadvantages of the various natural stones in order to find the most suitable granite for the Salzburg MT series. The blocks are still quarried in the same area in Europe today, but our knowledge of the value of these stones is much greater. More than ever, we appreciate the properties such as hardness, self-sharpening and durability and, above all, the quality of the flour that can be produced with granite stones. We, Salzburg millwrights, can also proudly claim to be the only ones in Europe with over 40 years of experience with granite grinding stones for electric household mills.