Another step toward better health: Grinding our own wheat

I mentioned in a previous post that we were looking into buying a grain mill...well here it is! We purchased The Kitchen Mill from The Urban Homemaker and I LOVE it! I ordered it last Monday and received it on Friday. I was so excited!

What started it all: I should back up and explain what spurred my desire to starting grinding our own wheat. I requested a free audio workshop by Sue at Breadbeckers a couple weeks ago called "Do Not Eat the Bread of Idleness." It is a very informative audio regarding the health benefits of using fresh ground flour in your baking. If you are interested, you can request a copy of this CD by emailing them at: support@breadbeckers.com and asking for the free audio CD called "Do Not Eat the Bread of Idleness." Include your mailing address in your email as well. After listening to this audio CD and praying about it, I really felt the Lord nudging me to go ahead and buy a mill and some wheat and start grinding our own flour at home.

Which grain mill should I get? After doing a lot of research, we decided on The Kitchen Mill from The Urban Homemaker. It is not the cheapest or the most expensive mill, but I felt it would get the job done. I have used it a few times now and it works wonderful! If you decide to get this mill, it is REALLY hard to release the side tabs to get the top off when you are done grinding wheat. But...I figured out a trick. I use the spoon end of a wooden spoon and put it under the tab and using it as a lever to snap the side tabs loose. It worked great and saved my fingers!

Where would I get wheat? Now I had a grain mill and no wheat! So...I started calling around trying to find a place where I could buy wheat berries in bulk. I found a small Amish/Mennonite store in a town about 40 minutes from where we live that sold 50# bags of wheat berries! I knew I needed to get the Hard Wheat as it has more glutten than the Soft Wheat. Soft Wheat is good for making pastries (pastry flour) but what I really wanted was wheat to make our breads. I never use pastry flour anyway, so I wanted to find some hard wheat I could use for all our baked goods. At this little store we found out that they sold Prairie Gold Hard White Wheat for $30 for a 50# bag and locally grown Hard Red Winter Wheat for $16 for a 50# bag. So my husband took a trip on Saturday and bought a 50# bag of each!

How am I going to store all this wheat? I knew I needed to have some 5-gallon buckets to store this wheat in but we didn't have any. We checked online and we could buy 4 5-gallon buckets with the nice lids for about $75---ouch! So...my husband suggested calling some donut shops to see if they had any that they had used for frosting/fillings, etc. I gave a quick call to a donut shop in a town about 7 miles from us and they had 4 buckets they would sell to use for $2 each! Yeah! So Saturday my husband ran over and picked those up as well. Now I had buckets! I filled an ice-cream bucket of each kind of wheat so I could start using it right away, and the rest of the wheat was placed in our big freezer for a couple days. This will kill any bugs/eggs that may be in the wheat. After a couple days I'll take the bags out and let them come to room temperature before I dump the wheat into the 5-gallon buckets for storage.

How it works. I have used the mill a few times now and it works great. It makes such fine flour. Last night I wanted to try out the Hard Red Winter Wheat (since it is a LOT cheaper) to see how it would work on making biscuits. I made a batch of biscuits with the flour and they were so light and fluffy and delicious! I can't wait to try to make bread with the flour, but I'll have to wait until my bread supply is running low before I do that.

I think I'll make another batch of biscuits today to have with our dinner tonight...yummy!

REMINDER: Tonight is the deadline to enter our monthly ebook giveaway! If you haven't entered, then do so today! I'll be having Random.org select the winners tomorrow morning.

May each of you have a blessed day,
Sheri