WonderMill Electric Grain Mill Reviews: Our Editorial Take

The short version

Here is the verdict before the detail. The WonderMill is a specialist that does one job extremely well and refuses a surprising number of others, and every real complaint traces back to that trade.

What's good:

• Very fine flour in a single pass, close enough to a stone mill that an owner of both cannot tell them apart by feel.
• Genuinely fast: WonderMill rates it at over 100 pounds of flour an hour, and there is no maximum run time to work around.
• Flour lands in a covered 12-cup canister through an air filter, so a milling session does not coat the kitchen.
• Milling heads are warranted for the lifetime of the original owner, with six years on every other part.
• Dead simple to operate. One switch, one knob, nothing to calibrate before a batch.

What's not:

• Dry, non-oily grain only. The manual bans nuts, sunflower and sesame seeds, flax, coffee, sugar, tapioca and dried fruit outright.
• You cannot wash it. Wipe the body, brush the lid, and flush the chamber with rice, because water must never get inside.
• Three knob positions, not a stone mill’s continuous adjustment, and no re-milling a batch to chase a finer grind.
• Big, white, plastic, and loud enough that cross-shoppers name noise as the reason they bought something else.
• No user serviceable parts, and WonderMill says any attempt to repair it voids the warranty.

Who it's for

This mill sorts buyers cleanly. Work out which side you are on before you spend the money.

Buy it for:

• Regular bread baking where you want a loaf’s worth of fine whole wheat flour in the time it takes to fill the mixer bowl.
• A prep pantry full of stored wheat, rice, corn and dry beans that you want to be able to turn into flour on demand.
• Gluten-free milling from dry grains such as rice, sorghum and millet, where fine texture matters more than adjustability.
• Anyone who wants a machine with no learning curve: no stones to set, no test batches, one switch.

Skip it if:

• You want to dial texture from cracked grain to fine flour. That is a stone mill’s job, and the NutriMill Harvest is the one to buy.
• You want to mill flax, sesame or nuts. No impact mill will do it, and WonderMill’s own grinding chart sends those items to a hand-crank burr mill.
• You are not sure milling is for you yet. The NutriMill Impact Compact is the cheaper way to find out before committing to a full-size machine.
• You want the mill to live on the counter and look good there. Owners of this one keep asking for something prettier to leave out.

If you are still deciding between mechanisms rather than between models, start with our electric versus manual grain mill guide and come back once you know which type you want.

The specs that matter

Three numbers do most of the work on this machine, and each one translates into something you will feel at the counter.

A 1250 watt micronizing motor rated for over 100 pounds of flour an hour: WonderMill puts that at roughly 12 cups of fine flour in about three minutes, so a single loaf takes well under a minute of actual milling. One owner clocks it at 750 grams a minute, which is the same rating expressed the other way round.

Three texture positions on one knob: the manual calls for the bread setting for most milling, an 11 to 12 o’clock fine setting for pastry flour, and the far coarse position for beans and large grains. It also tells you to return the knob to the bread position afterward, which is a small chore a stone mill does not ask of you.

A 12-cup flour canister fed through an air filter: about eight cups of grain in the hopper fills the canister to its 12-cup limit, so batch size is set by the canister rather than by the motor. Overfill it and you get flour above the rim and a mess when you lift the lid.

How well it preserves

Fineness and throughput are why this mill exists, and the harvest backs both up. The most useful report comes from someone who owns a WonderMill and a stone mill at the same time and mills on both:

I have both and they’re close enough that I can’t tell the difference in fineness by feel. One thing you cant do on the wonder mill is run the grain through multiple tjmes, which is possible in the mockmill. I’ve heard people say pre milling at a coarse setting then doing the final milling at the fine setting results in finer flour, I don’t feel the need to do that myself but ymmv. Oats btw tend to clog the mill, I typically mix my oats half with wheat and it runs thorough fine. The alternative is to feed pure oats slowly into the milling chamber and that seems to work too though it’s a giant pain imo.

That is the honest headline for this axis. The flour is fine enough that a working home baker cannot feel the gap, and the catch is the workflow rather than the result: what comes out on the first pass is what you get. Another owner describes tuning the knob to get there, and the reference point is high praise for a mill in this class:

Our Wondermill makes really nice fine flour, typically crank the dial to as fine as possible and then ratchet back slowly until the grain starts feeding, feels a lot like Caputo 00.

Speed is the other half. WonderMill rates the mill at over 100 pounds of flour an hour, and one owner who moved up from a hand crank and then a blender chose it specifically because of the throughput and the fact that nothing forces you to stop and let it cool:

I got a Wondermill! I got it on eBay pre owned. It came perfectly new and whoever used it maybe used it once or twice. It can grind corn if it is dry corn. Neither the mockmill or Wondermill can grind wet ingredients aka nixtamalized corn (corn cooked and soaked). Nixtamalized corn is the traditional way of making corn dough for tortillas, tamales, etc. some large companies and products do make tortilla chips from grinding dry corn and not nixtamilize. I have only had my Wondermill for almost a month. I started with a marcato mulino in December. It’s a hand crank and it just took too long. Switched over to my vitamix dry blender which is great! As a household of two I would’ve stayed with just that but I’m starting a cottage food operation. The Wondermill grinds 750 grams/min and doesn’t have a max time running the machine so it’s best fit for what I want to do. While I was originally looking to at the mockmill in November/December because of its various settings of cracking to fine flour - I realized majority of what I do won’t use the settings. It’s a good machine just not what I need

That comment also names the limit that matters most, and the manufacturer is blunter about it than any owner. WonderMill’s manual says never to mill grains with a high oil or moisture content, never to attempt wet or damp products, and never to mill nuts, sunflower or sesame seeds, flax, coffee beans, sugar, tapioca or dried fruit. The approved list is dry grain and dry, non-oily legumes: wheat, oats, rice, rye, spelt, kamut, millet, sorghum, buckwheat, dried field corn, popcorn, split peas, chick peas and dry beans. Milling something off that list is not just a bad idea, it is a warranty exclusion.

Two smaller performance notes are worth knowing. Oats are on the approved list but sit right at the edge of what the chamber handles cleanly, and the owner above mixes them half and half with wheat to keep things moving. And the mill is a good deal cheaper than the stone machines it gets compared to, which is the whole reason some bakers land here:

I purchased the Kitchenaid attachment and I did not like it at all. I sent it back and purchased a Wondermill. It did not mill the flour very fine at all and it got very hot! Plus it took forever to grind small amounts. I really love the Wondermill! However, Mokmill and the rest have amazing reputations! This was what I could afford at the moment and I’m happy.

Read that one carefully. The hot, coarse, slow machine she is describing is the KitchenAid attachment she returned, not the WonderMill she replaced it with.

Built to last

The warranty is unusually strong for a kitchen appliance, and it tells you what WonderMill expects to fail. Grote Molen warrants the milling heads for the lifetime of the original owner and every other part for six years. The catches are worth reading before you buy: the cover applies only to the original, non-commercial owner, it does not apply if you buy from an unauthorized dealer, and it does not cover foreign object damage, which is why the manual pushes triple-cleaned grain from a reputable source.

Owner reports are thin on failures and long on quiet service, which is the pattern you want. The most direct summary of a long ownership run is also the shortest comment in the harvest:

Wondermill - Yes! Had mine for years. Fast, efficient, inexpensive.

The real durability caveat is philosophical rather than mechanical. WonderMill states that the mill contains no user serviceable parts and that any attempt to repair it voids the warranty. There is nothing to dress, adjust or replace the way you would with stones, so a mill that stops working goes back to Idaho or becomes scrap. The clog procedure in the manual is the one repair you are allowed: unplug it, turn the knob to coarse, tip and tap the grain out, clear the flour outlet, and if the fuse on the bottom has popped, wait two minutes and press the reset button. That reset button is the single most useful thing to know about this machine.

Supply is the other long-term risk, and it is a real one. Buyers spend months watching for stock, which is worth knowing if you are counting on this mill as a pantry backstop:

Since the wondermill is out of stock and looks like it's hard to get do I wait for it to come back in stock OR do I purchase a Mock Mill, and then the question is 100 or 200? I'm new to this however I also want to make sure I'm purchasing something that will last and I can do what I want. So basically it'll be alot of just wheat flour for the most part but I also want to do corn to make nacho's and torts and then whatever else I find when heading down this little rabbit hole of fun.

Thanks. I ended up getting on a waitlist for Wondermill because of reviews saying how quiet it is, otherwise i think it's fairly comparable to Nutrimill in how it preforms.

Living with it

This is the axis where the WonderMill asks the most of you, and it is where the score comes down. Start with cleaning, because it is not optional knowledge. The manual says to brush the separator lid, cup and filter after each use, wipe the hopper and body with a damp cloth, and never immerse the mill or let water run into the grinding chamber. There is no way to open the body and look inside, which one owner discovered under the worst possible circumstances:

I have an unusual (I hope) issue. We had mice and either threw out food or put it in plastic containers. We hadn't seen activity for a while until I went to the pantry and moved some stuff. There were a bunch of droppings on the shelf next to my Wondermill opening where it attaches to the canister. The exterminator said the mice can get into an opening as small as a dime and the opening to the canister is definitely bigger than that. Is there a way to open the Wondermill and see if there are droppings in it? The instructions say not to get it wet inside. If the mice merely got in and urinated, is there a way to clean the inside? Should I abandon this $400+ machine? The ick factor is high here, but the money to replace it is not currently budgeted for. I did email the company and am waiting for a reply.

The standard answer in the sub is the same one the manual gives, and it works for factory dust, stale flour and a chamber you simply want to reset:

Well they say to run junk grain through the machines to get possible factory contaminates out… I think I would do that. Could do several cups of wheat or rice or something and it will clear junk out

WonderMill agrees. It tells you to mill 400 grams of hard grain and throw the flour away the first time you use the machine, and to run 100 grams of white rice through the chamber to clear a clog. Treat rice as your cleaning tool and the sealed body stops being a problem, as long as you never let anything damp near it.

Noise is the complaint that keeps buyers away, and the fair answer is nuanced. Impact mills are loud by nature, and WonderMill markets this one as the quietest grain mill available, which is exactly the sort of claim that sets up an argument. Both sides show up in the same subreddit. One buyer chose it because the reviews he read called it quiet. Another cross-shopper ruled it out for precisely the opposite reason:

New owner of a Mio. What kept me from the Wondermill or NM Classic was the noise level. Haven't had enough practice with it to say for certain, but no problems with getting flour fine enough (so far). Went with the Mio because of the 12 year warranty, looks, noise level, size, price and rated performance. Same stones, adjustment mechanism and motor as more expensive KoMo mills like the Classic, same rated output. Looks good enough sitting on the counter that it CAN sit on the counter.

Size and looks draw the other recurring gripe. This is a tall white plastic machine that comes with a separate canister, and nobody in this harvest calls it attractive. Owners keep asking the sub for something they can leave out instead:

Is there something you did not like about KOMO? UI have wondermill, but I want one to leave out on the counter.

A friend who is an avid baker (bakes 5/7) days per week with her own sourdough, regrets not having a Mockmill or Komo. She says the Wondermill is fine, albeit takes up a lot of space, but she can't wait to get her hands on a Mockmill.

The last thing to plan for is grain. A mill this fast makes the flour question trivial and the sourcing question urgent, and shipping wheat berries is heavy and expensive:

Hey Everyone, Just got my mill yesterday and very excited to give this a try. Just wondering where are people buying their berries on the east coast? I looked at a few sites and with the shipping prices (Almost as much as the item itself) it's a littie daunting. I have a postal box in Calais, ME, and was thinking that might also be an option as I could have them ordered there and then bring them into Canada. But how long do you think the berries would last? Don't go down as often right now to pick up any parcels. Thanks

How it compares

Four machines come up whenever this mill is cross-shopped. Here is where each one actually beats it or loses to it.

Versus the NutriMill Harvest: the Harvest is the stone-burr answer to everything the WonderMill will not do. It adjusts continuously from cracked grain to fine flour, grinds cooler, and is the mill to buy if texture control is what you are paying for. It costs more, mills more slowly, and looks like something you would leave on a counter. Our NutriMill Harvest review goes through it in full.

Versus the NutriMill Impact Compact: same impact mechanism, much smaller machine, noticeably cheaper. It makes the same style of fine flour with less throughput and a footprint you can store in a cupboard, which makes it the sensible way to test whether home milling sticks before spending WonderMill money.

Versus the Kitchen Mill Model 95: the other American-assembled impact mill in this bracket, with a stainless milling chamber and maker claims of being quieter, faster and cooler. It is the obvious cross-shop when the WonderMill is out of stock, which happens often enough to matter.

Versus a manual mill like the Victoria: a hand-crank burr mill is not a replacement, it is insurance. It grinds slowly and it is real work, but it runs with no power and it handles the oily seeds and nuts the electric mill is forbidden to touch. Plenty of prep-minded owners keep both.

Using it well

A few habits get the best out of this machine. Mill 400 grams of hard wheat and discard that first batch to clear manufacturing dust, as WonderMill instructs. Leave the knob on the bread setting for almost everything, drop to the fine setting only when a recipe genuinely needs pastry flour, and move it to coarse before you put beans or large grains in the hopper. Fill the hopper and let it empty rather than topping it up while the mill runs, because that is how you overfill the canister and wear a cloud of flour when you lift the lid. Let the mill run about five seconds after the last grain goes through, which is what clears the chamber. Keep everything dry, keep oily seeds out entirely, and store berries in an airtight container, because the manual is right that moisture is the enemy here.

Flour from any mill is at its best fresh, so mill what you plan to bake within a few days rather than filling a bin. If sourdough is the reason you are buying, our guide to the best grain mill for sourdough covers how grind texture and flour freshness change a loaf, and where an impact mill fits alongside the stone machines.

The bottom line

The WonderMill is a very good machine with a narrow brief. It makes fine flour fast, it makes a lot of it, it puts that flour in a sealed canister instead of on your cabinets, and it is backed by the strongest warranty in this category. If your milling is wheat, rice, corn and dry beans for bread and everyday baking, it does the job with almost no thought required, and owners who have had one for years talk about it in exactly those terms.

The reasons to buy something else are all knowable in advance. It only does fine flour, one pass at a time. It cannot touch anything oily or damp, by manufacturer instruction rather than by rumor. It cannot be washed or repaired. It is a loud, plain, bulky appliance that will live in a pantry. If none of that bothers you, this is a strong buy at a fair price. If any of it does, spend the extra on a stone mill and enjoy the adjustability instead.