October 29th, 2007 - Fresh ground wheat flour
A few weeks ago, I bought a hand crank grain mill, The Family Grain Mill. Yesterday, I FINALLY used it. It took me about 25 minutes to grind 1# of organic hard red wheat berries at the finest setting. (This was after grinding .8# and forgetting to time it. So 1# probably takes less time if that’s all I do.) Wheat berries cost less than flour, but since I’m buying organic ones I probably won’t end up saving all that much money–over the cost of unbleached white flour at the store at least. Compared to the stone ground organic wheat flour I like to buy, it’s probably going to come out a bit even. Except that the mill cost over $100 so I won’t come out even until I make an awful lot! (Except that I paid for the mill out of my own spending money. So the house might save grocery money. And storage money–I won’t have to store whole wheat flour in the freezer anymore–you grind as you need it. Or in my case, probably once a week I’ll do about 1.5-2# at a time. Once I buy some in bulk.)
I also got a book about whole wheat bread making. I don’t know how well the recipes work in bread machines–maybe there’s a whole wheat bread machine book out there–but will try. The thing is–they are 100% whole grain breads, no white flour at all. If I could actually bake bread like that that came out nice that would be awesome. For now, I usually sub about 1 cup of ww flour for white flour in any given recipe. (And I make a “super flour” that adds in soy flour, wheat germ, flax seed meal, and nutritional yeast.)
Oh yeah–another advantage is that my arms get a small workout grinding the grain! Much more than carrying the 5# bags of flour every now and then a couple feet. :)
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