Do you grind your own wheat into flour?

[Sue G in PA]

I was just reading somebody's blog (from my MFW yahoo group) where she talked about buying wheat berries and griding her own wheat into flour to make bread, etc. If this has already been discussed, my apologies. But, I'm just curious how this is done? Remember, I'm very inept at anything kitchen related! So, do you buy a grinder? And, where would you buy the wheat to grind? We don't farm. (yet). I'm constantly disappointed at the ingredients in commercial break (as I am w/ most foods) so I thought if we made our own, it would be fun. Plus, I do have a bread maker that has not been used in years. TIA for any info you might have!

[Ellie]

I was just reading somebody's blog (from my MFW yahoo group) where she talked about buying wheat berries and griding her own wheat into flour to make bread, etc. If this has already been discussed, my apologies. But, I'm just curious how this is done? Remember, I'm very inept at anything kitchen related! So, do you buy a grinder? And, where would you buy the wheat to grind? We don't farm. (yet). I'm constantly disappointed at the ingredients in commercial break (as I am w/ most foods) so I thought if we made our own, it would be fun. Plus, I do have a bread maker that has not been used in years. TIA for any info you might have!

 

Yes, I grind my own wheat. I have a grain mill, and I use wheat berries I bought locally (where I lived in Calif). You can also buy wheat berries on-line from a number of suppliers; you might even be able to find them where you live.

 

I use a Bosch mixer to make bread. Some breadmakers cannot handle 100 percent whole wheat flour, so I've heard.

[kokotg]

yes, we grind our own. We have a grain mill (it's electric--you just dump the wheatberries in and flour comes out). We live about 15 minutes away from this place: http://www.breadbeckers.com , so we buy all ours there, but a lot of people organize co-ops to do big bulk shipments from breadbeckers or other places.

[Sue G in PA]

Yes, I grind my own wheat. I have a grain mill, and I use wheat berries I bought locally (where I lived in Calif). You can also buy wheat berries on-line from a number of suppliers; you might even be able to find them where you live.

 

I use a Bosch mixer to make bread. Some breadmakers cannot handle 100 percent whole wheat flour, so I've heard.

 

 

Okay, so walk me through the process? I buy a grain mill (are they expensive?), grind the wheat and that's it? Is it time consuming? Is it really worth it to buy the mill, the berries and make my own? Health wise, I'm sure it is.

[Pster]

I grind our wheat.

I have a Nutrimill grinder. Works great - but it is around $250. Breadbeckers.com has co-ops all over that you can order bulk grains from at a discount (check their site for a co-op near you).

 

I will grind a ziploc freezer bag of wheat (or whatever) every couple weeks so I have what I need ready. I store them in the freezer. Doing it like this makes the whole process more efficient for me. Love, love, love the smell of fresh ground flour!

 

I have a bread maker (an OLD one my dh had before we were married) but... I find I like making most of our breads by hand anyway. Plus...think beyond bread to everything you will use the flour for - biscuits, muffins, pancakes, quick breads, cookies, cakes,.... etc etc. I have rye / wheat biscuits in the oven right now for supper - throw some butter on one of those & yummy!!

 

hth

[nancypants]

No, I do not. Probably should for the price of bread... but well... I'm way too lazy for that, to be quite honest!! :blush:

[Jennifer in MI]

I grind my wheat in my VitaMix (a high-powered blender). I usually only grind what I need for a particular recipe. The health benefits of the fresh-ground wheat are much better if you use it right away. I get my berries from a food coop in 50 pound bags.

 

Before you invest in a wheat grinder, try making bread in your machine. See if it's something you could do consistently. I timed myself once. It took fewer than 10 minutes to grind the wheat and put all the ingredients into my bread machine. I have my machine make the dough. Then, I take it out to shape it into pizza crusts, bread, hot dog buns, hamburger buns, etc.

 

Good luck! We LOVE fresh-made bread!!

[BlsdMama]

Yes, we do. We also use the NutriMill - it doesn't heat the wheat when it's ground so fewer vitamins/minerals destroyed. When you do the research on how quickly flour gets rancid, you'll be motivated. ;)

 

We don't use a breadmaker as we make five loaves at a time, so we use our Bosch and then bake in XL Norpro pans.

 

We live by an Amish community and buy our wheat berries out there, but they are from Montana Wheat... Prairie Gold if you're interested!

[Julpost]

Yes, I just started about 6 months ago. It's about as easy as you can imagine...it only adds maybe 2 minutes to the process. Just dump the wheat berries in and that's that. I keep the excess in freezer bags for wen I need a spoon here or there for different recipes. You can also grind up beans for adding bean flour...it's endless. The book, Country Beans, is pretty helpful. I always tell people that it sounds more impressive than it is because it's so easy. It takes more work to manually open a can of something than to grind wheat. However, making bread does take a bit of time, that's something I only do once a week. I make tortillas, biscuits, muffins, etc. the rest of the time.

 

Good luck!

[nmoira]

I grind our wheat.

I have a Nutrimill grinder. Works great - but it is around $250. Breadbeckers.com has co-ops all over that you can order bulk grains from at a discount (check their site for a co-op near you).

 

I will grind a ziploc freezer bag of wheat (or whatever) every couple weeks so I have what I need ready. I store them in the freezer. Doing it like this makes the whole process more efficient for me. Love, love, love the smell of fresh ground flour!

This is almost exactly what I do, though I get my grains right from Bob's Red Mill (it's only about 20 minutes away).

[*anj*]

Yes, we do. We also use the NutriMill - it doesn't heat the wheat when it's ground so fewer vitamins/minerals destroyed. When you do the research on how quickly flour gets rancid, you'll be motivated. ;)

 

We don't use a breadmaker as we make five loaves at a time, so we use our Bosch and then bake in XL Norpro pans.

 

We live by an Amish community and buy our wheat berries out there, but they are from Montana Wheat... Prairie Gold if you're interested!

 

This is similar to what I do.

I use a WhisperMill, (which was the predecessor of the NutriMill.) It takes very little time to grind the wheat, and the sound is about the same as a vacuum cleaner.

 

I use a heavy duty mixer called a Dimension 2000, it was made by the same company as the WhisperMill, and they went out of business. (They sold the grain mill specs and now that's why there's a NutriMill.) Anyway, I mix and knead three loaves of bread at a time, but my machine could mix six. I use Norpro pans too.

 

Once a year I order my grain through a local co-op. We buy our wheat from Wheat Montana. I buy some Prairie Gold and I also buy Hard Red Spring Wheat. We like both, though their flavors are different.

[Heather in Neverland]

:lol::lol::lol:

 

I can't even imagine it. I am so not talented at things like that. I don't even make rice krispy treats from scratch!

[astrid]

WHY do you grind your own wheat berries into flour? I make bread all the time, by hand, without a bread machine. But I just use King Arthur Organic flour.

 

Is there some reason why so many of you do this? It just seems like a LOT of extra work, for not much savings, to me. Or are wheat berries much, much cheaper than flour?

[*anj*]

I'm not sure that it's cheaper, but it is just healthier. Wheat is an oily grain and as soon as it is ground, the oils begin to oxidize very quickly and the flour turns rancid. I used to think this was an exaggeration, but once I started to grind my own it became so clear to me. The smell of packaged flour is "off" to my nose now. The aroma of freshly ground flour is kind of like freshly cut grass. It is fragrant and clean smelling.

 

There are also many valuable nutrients that die soon after the wheat is ground. Commercial flour is enriched with vitamins in an effort to replace the lost nutrients with laboratory made vitamins.

 

Also, home ground flour contains all of the wheat, including the germ. When I empty my container into my bowl am getting every part of the wheat. There is nothing left behind.

 

You can visit my friend Marye's site for more information. She knows nearly everything there is to know about healthy eating.

[Mekanamom]

The smell of packaged flour is "off" to my nose now. The aroma of freshly ground flour is kind of like freshly cut grass. It is fragrant and clean smelling.

 

 

Oh! Yes, that makes sense. I often make our bread (in a bread machine) but I buy my flour. However, my mother did grind her own wheat when I was growing up, and yeah... I remember that smell. Nothing at all like store bought flour. I guess I thought it was the heat generated by the machine that made it smell that way. :blushing: I really had no idea the nutrients died off so quickly. That makes a lot of sense though- I know flax seed needs to be consumed shortly after grinding.

 

Hmm. I inherited my grandmother's flour mill. It's electric, but about a million years old. ;) It's really big and looks like a wooden box. Maybe I should clean it out and give it a try sometime! My parents have wheat berries left over from the 70's! They stored it under the house. Does it ever go bad? LOL.

 

Sooo... some bread machines can't handle 100% WW flour? Is it too dense?

[Robin in Tx]

There is no way I'd attempt growing my own wheat. It has to be just the right conditions, and there is a lot to harvesting, threshing, etc.

 

I get 50lb bags from Wheat Montana Farms. Bronze chief for red wheat, Golden 86 for white wheat. You can go to their website or Walton Feed's website and see if there if someone in your area orders in bulk. That is the best cheapest way to get wheat... order with an established group.

 

Good luck! It is so much better than anything you can buy, but the initial equipment is not cheap.

[*anj*]

 

Hmm. I inherited my grandmother's flour mill. It's electric, but about a million years old. ;) It's really big and looks like a wooden box. Maybe I should clean it out and give it a try sometime! My parents have wheat berries left over from the 70's! They stored it under the house. Does it ever go bad? LOL.

 

Sooo... some bread machines can't handle 100% WW flour? Is it too dense?

 

Oh yeah, give it a try. That could be so cool!

Did you know that they've found wheat berries in the tombs of the Pharaohs? As long as yours was properly stored it should be just fine.

 

Yeah, I think it's too dense for their motors. I know that some people have found a way to do it successfully though. Also, you might consider just adding even 1/4 cup of white flour. Maybe that would help, though I can't be certain because I haven't used a bread machine in about six years.

[nmoira]

 

There is no way I'd attempt growing my own wheat. It has to be just the right conditions, and there is a lot to harvesting, threshing, etc.

:lol: This was my first thought as well... I was picturing myself as the Little Red Hen...

[Rosie_0801]

WHY do you grind your own wheat berries into flour? I make bread all the time, by hand, without a bread machine. But I just use King Arthur Organic flour.

 

Is there some reason why so many of you do this? It just seems like a LOT of extra work, for not much savings, to me. Or are wheat berries much, much cheaper than flour?

 

It's a lot of work if you don't have an electric grinder! I used to grind using a cheap manual machine before I had kids. Not even once since :) Since then I've been saving for a nice electric one and am waiting for it to arrive in the mail! The reason I prefer to grind my own is for the increased nutritional value. Nearly all the vitamins are found in the oily part of the seed, which has to be removed for flour to have enough of a shelf life to be practical for business. No shop would be able to function if they had to shift their stock every three days because it had gone rancid. I'm in the camp that believes that bread is supposed to have a nutritional content. One book I have says refined white flour has lost 60% of the original calcium and 76% of the iron, just to give two examples.

 

I believe organic wheat groats (or berries as you say) are much cheaper than flour, and are certainly cheaper than buying organic bread! Maybe I just had fantastic luck, but the last bag of biodynamic wheat I bought was AU$11 for about 10kg. A loaf would set me back $6. Also, it's so much more economical to use wholewheat flour. Two slices for breakfast instead of half a loaf each of white supermarket bread. I sometimes wonder if they put any flour at all in that stuff.

 

Anyway, I think the world would be a happier place if we could all have home made bread and home grown tomatoes for breakfast.

:)

Rosie

[Jean in IN]

I grind my own wheat and use my breadmaker. I bought the cheapest wheat grinder from http://www.urbanhomemaker.com and buy the wheat berries at a local amish store.

I use this recipe from urbanhomemaker. I love her recipes! http://articles.urbanhomemaker.com/index.php?page=index_v2&id=83&c=6

Like the other ladies said, it's as easy as can be!

hth

[cjzimmer1]

Well I just received an ancient mill from an aging relative. Other than it weighs a ton (in a big wooden box like another poster mentioned) it worked great. It wasn't nearly as loud as my vacuum cleaner and baby slept right through it. I'm still working on how to adapt recipes to use the whole grain flour because I've never worked with anything but all-purpose and have never baked bread before either so I'm being very ambitious. I'm using the book Artisian Bread in five minutes a day to get started learning how to make bread. My family loves it and I loves just stirring some stuff together once a week. I don't think I have the patience to mix, knead, wait, knead, bake. I think the kneading step intimidates me. I like the mix, flop it on some parchment paper and bake for supper approach. The only drawback is now trying to figure out how to incorporate my fresh wheat flour into their recipes without making biscotti (which is exactly the texture and shape of my first attempt).

 

Stephanie