Freshly Ground
May 20, 2007 by Marye Audet
Filed under Bakers' Tools
I have had people ask me why I take the time to grind wheat berries. The answer is quite simple. Oh my gosh! It is SO much better than the preground flour you buy at the store! The taste is fresh and wheaty…it smells wonderful. All of the vitamins and nutrients are intact..and the flavor of the finished product is fabulous.
And yeah, it’s cheaper.
The wheat that I like best is a hard white hi protien berry. The flour is lighter than the traditional hard red, has a more delicate flavor and the higher protien gives the dough more elasticity so it is easier to work with than the red. Locally, I have my natural foods store special order it for me by the 25lb or 50 lb bag…25 lbs is about $8.50..The preground whole wheat flour, not even organic, is selling for over $3 for 5 lbs…so you can see that it is cost effective.
Wheat berries store longer..almost indefinitely. Add a few bay leaves to the storage container and the wheat will stay bug free.
O.k…so now you are convinced. What do you need?
You need to look for a good wheat grinder. You are probably going to want an electric one because it takes for ever to hand mill enough wheat for a loaf of bread. I like mine alot, although it does sound like a Boeing 747 taking off.
Next you need a supply for wheat. There are severl different types of wheat berries. “soft” refers to a wheatberry without much gluten and these are best for cake and pastry baking. “Hard” refers to what is normally used for bread. Decide if it is important to you to pay the extra for organic or not. Expect to pay around $10 or so for a 25 lb bag.
These are what the wheatberries look like. You can actually cook them and use them like barley in their whole grain state..they are very good.
Besure to check the berries over carefully before putting them int he grinder. Once in awhile they will have a litle stone in them and it will really mess up the grinding burrs. Choose the size grind and start your engine!
It is messy. In nice weather we gind outside most often to keep the fine flour dust from settling on everything. It takes about 10 minutes of grinding to grind 5 lbs of flour..
and there it is..fresh, whole wheat flour. Full of vitamins, but most of all , full of flavor.
With a mill you can also grind various types of dry beans, soy beans to make soy flour (necessary for homemade tofu..that is fun to make!), oat groats for oat flour and nearly any other nonoily type of seed or bean you can think of.
I will be at a doctors appointment tomorrow so wont be checking email or comments. Have an awesome Monday!
I agree completely, but we still use the hand crank to mill our flour (it’s good for our kids), but I am having a terrible time getting the bread (using a bread machine) to come out like a brick.
Any advice or comments are welcome.
Sorry, I meant to say that all the loaves come out of the machine like bricks, and we would like them to be less brick-like.
Craig,
a couple of things come to mind. Most bread machines are just not equipped to work with whole wheat..it is too heavy for them. The easiest way to get a nice light loaf is to use a mixer like a Bosch, or a K-tec Champ. I have the champ but I am saving for a Bosch because, when I replaced my 12 year old K-tec with a new one the new one is not nearly as good as the old, in my opinion.
The bread must be kneaded thoroughly by mixer or hand, until it is very elastic. This will take 15 minutes at least if you are doing it by hand. The other thing is you can try getting some wheat gluten and substituting it for 1/4 c of flour in every 4 cup measure. SO for 8 cups of flour you would use 1/2 c gluten..I am posting a recipe in a minute of my tomato swirl bread and I will post a close up so you can see the texture..it is 100% whole wheat that I ground this morning. Hope this helps! Good luck!
I use a Nutrimill for my grains, and a DLX for mixing. My favorite recipe when using freshly milled wheat is Denise’s, which you can find here:
http://www.countrybaker.com/recipes.php?cat=Breads
It uses lecithin and a dough enhancer. Sometimes I use diatastic malt. But nothing can replace good old “time” — allowing the yeast to do its work.
Thank you both very much for your comments. I will do some experimenting over the next few weeks, and report back. It may be time to consider a new machine. This one is nearly 15 years old (Zojirushi – It was a good brand in the early days).
I just bought the champ used from ebay. It doesn’t have the lid, so I’ll have to try to purchase that seperately. I wanted the bosch, but just couldn’t swing it. I got the champ for $73.00. Anyway, there’s no manual either. Do you know where I can get these replacements and what do you not like about it? I’m currently using an oster kitchen center that will only do 6 lbs. and I have to stay with it the whole time.
You should be able to get parts at K-tec. I don;t know that web address offhand but I will see if i can check it for you.
The new design is just not as good as the old one. You used ot be able to set the time for the mixing and kneading manually, and you can’t do that anymore…also it just doesn’t seem to have the strength that it used ot.
Marye – I just bought a used k-tec champ (older model) on ebay and I think I’m over-kneading bread. How long should it take to knead a four-loaf batch of whole wheat, ballpark?
RAndy,
probably not more than 4-5 minutes. If you use the autoknead that should be about right.
Mine doesn’t have the autoknead – it’s a two-speed dial. I am beginning to think I should not have had the mixing blade on with the dough hook, though that’s how it looks like it ought to work. I think the mixing blade is shredding the gluten…
Make sure you only grind the wheat into flour as you need it. Once the wheat is ground into flour, it will lose 90% of its nutrients within 72 hours. This is why the flour from the store is no good. Cooking the flour will seal in the nutrients.