Milling Your Own Flour: The How’s and Why’s

Why Would You Want To?

There are many reasons you should/would want to grind your own flour for bread baking. First the quality and flavor you get from home ground flour simply can’t be duplicated with any commercially available flour. Myself, I don’t care for wholegrain breads because until I started milling my own flour they were always dry, heavy and tasted off or kind of dirty. With home milled flour, the bread is lighter, moister and has a wonderful fresh and often nutty taste.

Another reason you should grind your own grain flours is for the health benefits. All commercially made grain flours have had the germ removed. This is the part of the grain that contains healthy nutritious oils. They remove it to extend the shelf life of the grain other wise with it left in the flour would go rancid in a day or so unless it was frozen which is expensive and not something most supermarkets would be willing to do. So by removing the germ it can sit on the shelf for months or even years and still be edible. However, just because it is edible doesn’t mean it is good. Grain flours even those with the bran remove deteriorate quickly and loose a lot of vitamins and minerals. So, those flours you buy in the store while still better for you than white flour aren’t all that they could be and should be.

Finally, grinding your own flours can give you access to flours that you might not be able to get otherwise. For example, spelt flour or kamut flour can be very hard to find. I have yet to see a supermarket that carries these. However, finding the whole grain is often easier as whole grains keep a very long time and so are easier for stores to carry. Also, these specialty flours are cheaper when ground at home. A pound of spelt grain is much cheaper than a pound of spelt flour assuming you can find it. Also, you have control over how much you have on hand, how fine or course it is ground, etc. Add in the flavor and nutrition and you have very good reasons to make your own flour.

What You Need to Grind Your Own Flour

Now I am sure you are wondering how hard it is to make your own flour. Well, all you need is the grain or grains of your choice and a good grain mill and you’re ready. Most grains can be found at health food stores and if you need larger quantities co-ops are good way to go. A grain mill will cost you around $240 for a good quality one that will last your lifetime.

I have had experience with several grain mills over the years. I would suggest getting the WonderMill or Nutrimill high quality, tough grain mills. Both these mill will give you great flour quickly with controls allowing you to change it from slightly coarse to fine flour. The WonderMill is slightly quieter, slightly more powerful, and much cleaner than the Nutrimill; The Nutrimill will do slightly coaser grain than the WonderMill can. If you are on a tight budget you may want to settle for the KTEC or VitaMill which have poor flour coarseness consistency and are much louder and lower quality electric grain mills.

You might also consider the Wonder Junior hand grain mill. It has the abillity to do very fine flour to very coase flour plus it can mill oily grains, nuts, seeds, and more… It is hand operated which makes it slower and more work but gives you more options and can save you some space on your counter. I currently use the WonderMill electric grain mill and the Wonder Junior grain mill so I have speed and options. I love both these grain mills and can highly recomend them.

There are other mills on the market. Which one you choose is up to you. Just make sure you get a good one. Generally, the better the warranty the better the unit, what these things do is very tough work and only good ones are going to have a long warranty.

You can purchase grain mills from our Online Store!

Buying and Storing Grain

Like I said above a lot of supermarkets now a days have health food sections and so you can usually fine most grains there. However, probably the best places are true health food stores and co-ops. Co-ops are great when you need 20 to 50 pounds of a certain type of grain. However, some do sell in smaller quantity. To find a Co-op near you check your yellow pages. Health Food Stores will have just about everything you need, you can buy in small and large quantity. However, while whole grains don’t seem to go bad (they have found perfectly good grain in pyramids) I recommend that you shop at one that does a lot of business so they have a good turn over so you get grain that is as fresh as possible. If you only have one health food store in your town then you are stuck. You could order online, but the shipping is going to kill you. However, if you have no choice I suggest you order in large quantity so the shipping isn’t as bad.

Like I said they have found perfectly good grain in ancient pyramids so whole grain doesn’t seem to go bad. What can be a problem are bugs. So, if you are going to have grains around the house you need to take steps to protect it. I recommend that whole grain be stored in the freezer. However, if you have 50 pounds of it that can be hard to do, in that case you need to store it in a very and I mean very tight lidded container and even then you can still end up with a bug problem. How, well the bugs may not be getting in to the grain, they could already be there in egg form and then they hatch and presto you have bugs in your grain. Storing grain in the freezer kills the eggs and if you have egg free grain (which is in most cases) it keeps them out.

My recommendation for buying grain is this. If you have a health food store locally that you can get your grain from. Buy in small amounts say 3 to 4 pounds at a time and keep it in your freezer. If you have to travel far or order and have your grain shipped then invest in a very good tight lidded container and store most of your grain in it in a cool dry dark place (also, include a handful of bay leaves on the top which helps repel bugs) and then keep 2 to 3 pounds in your freezer, refilling from the large container as needed).

Storing Home Ground Flour

Because fresh flour doesn’t keep well, it is highly recommended that you only grind what you can use in a few hours time. If you do grind more than you need store it in a tight lidded container in the freezer and use with in a day or two.

The Grain

While you can make bread from just about any grain, there are a few things you need to keep in mind; these are gluten content and taste. Gluten is the protein in grain that when moistened forms an elastic stretchy substance. It is this substance that traps the gases given off by the yeast which raises the bread. If there isn’t enough gluten then the yeast gases will escape and the bread will not rise. The only grains that contain a large enough amount of gluten to raise bread are wheat, spelt and kamut. Spelt and kamut are ancient forms of our modern day wheat. All other grains don’t contain enough gluten and there for can not be used to make bread by themselves.

The second thing you need to keep in mind is the taste. Some grains like barley even if you could make bread from it would taste horrible in such large amounts. So what am I saying? I am saying the majority of the flour used to make bread needs to be wheat, spelt or kamut. The rest of the grains can be used, but need to be used in small amounts so that you don’t end up with a brick and a nasty tasting one at that. Below is a chart covering all of the grains available today, a description and how much gluten they contain.

Grain/Gluten Chart

So, just how much of the low gluten flours should you use in a recipe. Let’s take a 1-1/2 pound recipe with 3-1/2 cups of flour as an example. Myself I would use 2-1/2 cups of high gluten flour like white bread flour, whole wheat, kamut or spelt four. Then you could safely make up the rest in a single or even several low/no gluten flours. You just need to keep the majority of the flour to a high gluten one. Flours with strong tastes like barley I would use just a tablespoon or so, so that I didn’t end up with bread that tasted bad. However, there I no reason you could use more if you like the taste.

Tips:

1. Whenever possible store your whole grain in the freezer, if this isn’t possible store in a tight lidded container in a cool, dark, dry place.
2. When deciding what flours to use in recipes remember to keep the low/no gluten flours to a minimum.
3. Remember some grains have a strong taste. Don’t forget to take this in to consideration when choosing which flours your going to use and how much of each.
4. While breads like pumpernickel use some course or meal flours, in general the finer the flour grind the more of the grains gluten there is available for creating the structure of the bread. Because of this try to keep coarse ground flours to a minimum, I use no more than 1/2 cup total.
5. Ideally you should only grind the amount of flour you can use in a 12 hour period. This ensures that you are using the freshest and more nutritious flour possible.
6. If you grind more flour than you can use right away store it in the freezer in a tight-lidded container and use with in a day or two.

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