Anyone grind wheat for baking?

MillsFarmFamily · #1 11/26/05, 04:16 PM

Does anyone here grind wheat for bread and general baking? If so, what type of grinder do you recommend? Also where do you purchase your bulk wheat? A friend of mine has an electric grinder and orders her wheat in 5 gallon buckets, but I was wondering if anyone here had advice? My hubby says that I can just use the bulk wheat from the mill (the same stuff we fatten cows with!) I'm not convinced.

Raftercat5 · #2 11/26/05, 04:51 PM

I sure hope someone in the know can answer your question, because that's why I signed my computer on this evening...to ask the exact same question!
I would love to get a grinder and grind my own wheat, oats, etc., but have no clue about it. If one were to grow their own wheat or get it from a farmer, does it have to have the outside of the kernels (chaff??) removed? If so, how? I grew up in a city, but love farm life now. Just have a lot to learn yet. Does the grinder separate out the stuff that is not good, or what? I bought some whole oats for our goats (who wouldn't eat any, so we gave it away to someone to plant for deer). I thought I'd love to have been able to grind it, but doesn't the outside of them all need to be removed? (confused)
- Kathy

cindyc · #3 11/26/05, 05:03 PM

Yep, I grind my own wheat. I have a whisper mill. If you have a bosh or kitchen aid universal appliance, it my be possible to just get an attachment instead of a whole new machine. A good place to look and compare stuff like that is www.urbanhomemaker.com. In fact, if you enter their site and look down the column on the left hand side, you will see a link for grain mill comparisons.

Where to get wheat...
Seed wheat that isn't sold is chemically treated. That my not be a good plan. You will have to ask if that is the case for feed, because I don't know. You can get wheat from bulk food co-ops, some health food stores, and from www.breadbeckers.com. The cheapest place to get it, if they have a truck delivering near you is http://www.somethingbetternaturalfoods.com/grains.html. The catch is a) they have to be delivering near you. You have to get together enough of your friends to do a $450.00 order (or go on someone else's order) to get the truck to stop. The good news is that a lot of thier stuff is really cheap, and they are basic things that most people would probably use anyway.

Hope that helps,
Cindyc.

TnAndy · #4 11/26/05, 05:09 PM

If you want a hand mill, the Country Living Mill is a good one. We have one, and in a non-power situation, this would be what we would use.

http://waltonfeed.com/country1.html

But for fast grinding, we use a Vita-mix blender......it will turn a couple cups of wheat berries to dust in a minute or so flat.....makes a great whole wheat flour.

We get wheat in 5 gallon buckets from Walton Feed. It will keep forever.

MillsFarmFamily · #5 11/26/05, 05:58 PM

Forgot to ask, what about weevils? Do they get into unground wheat like they do the flour in my pantry?

TnAndy · #6 11/26/05, 06:01 PM

Don't think so.....but I don't look either......berries to flour.....what's a little more protein content ?

ahahahahaaa

BearCreekFarm · #7 11/26/05, 06:20 PM

We are never going to make it as homesteaders

We grow our own wheat, we have a Country Living mill (very nice), and we have yet, in the year we have been married, to ever grind so much as one single little wheat berry. We talk about it a lot though. Maybe this winter we will get around to it. Part of the problem was cleaning it- but we finally found a fanning mill at an auction a couple of months ago. We just haven't hooked it up and used it yet.

Rafter- you can clean small amounts by tossing it up in front of a fan, over a bucket or wash tub. The chaff will blow away and the heavier wheat will fall into the container. We would do this is we had a small amount, but we have hundreds of pounds to clean.

If you get a mill definitely check out the Country Living one- DH bought it as a manual grinder, but you can add a motor to it. I think we have an old washing machine motor which we got for free- the grinder comes with a pulley for it. This way we can use the motor as long as we have power, but if the SHTF we could still use the same grinder manually. You do not have to remove any hulls from the wheat- just grind away, much better if you are getting the whole wheat flour. If you are worried about bugs, put your 5 gallon buckets in the freezer and just take out small amounts as you need to grind them.

dalilies · #8 11/26/05, 07:04 PM

I'm just figuring things out as I go along so someone let me know if I'm messing up and endangering my family.

Last summer, we just got a 5 gal bucket from a local farmer straight from the field. It is pretty clean but I do pick out the bigger pieces of chaff. I froze it for a week to kill any critters and store it in air tight containers. I coursely grind it for biscuits with my blender set on grind. I don't do it very often or I would have to get a better way to grind it. I'm afraid that it is hard on my blender's blades.

Jennifer

All country · #9 11/26/05, 07:30 PM

I have a Golden Grain Grinder. I love it. It can be used electric or manual. The adjustments can be made to grind course for cereal to super fine for cake flour. I ordered it from Walton Feed. It is a bit noisy to use, but we love the way it mills our wheat.

I have had a full grain wagon of it recently given to me. I will probably feed it to the animals. I prefer to use organic grain and we love the taste of Prairie Gold's hard White. I don't think it can be beat for taste. Even DH who refuses to eat whole wheat from the store loves it. You can usually get it from Amish or Mennonite run stores. I usually order mine from www.somethingbetternaturalfoods.com If I buy wheat in bags instead of buckets, I place it in an oven at 170 degrees for about 4-5 hours then let it completely cool. Then I put it in buckets and place several bay leaves in with it. I have never had it get buggy this way, just be sure you get all the bay leaves out before milling your wheat.

albionjessica · #10 11/26/05, 07:36 PM

I do not have the space to store fresh grain, nor a suitable countertop that would allow me to clamp on the type of mill I would like, but I do love to bake my own fresh bread at least once a week. I can tell you that you shouldn't expect very fine flour from a grinder attachment for your kitchen-aid mixer if you have one. I did try that, at least. Even after a few passes, the flour was still nutty. I guess I'll just have to wait until we build our new house to try grinding with a real mill.

In the meantime, here's a fun article about breads: http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/clay78.html

Sara in IN · #11 11/26/05, 07:59 PM

We have a Country Living Mill that Dearly Demented Hubby motorized. It's clamped to the built-in bench in the workshop - it's not going anywhere. Takes about half an hour or so to grind half of a 5 gallon bucketsworth of flour.

White winter wheat (Montana 86 or Prairie Gold) makes a good bread flour, especially if you add 25-50% regular bread flour. Hard red winter wheat makes hockey pucks IMO if you use it at 100% for bread flour. Use hrw wheat flour for noodles or cook whole, dry and crack for bulgur.

Illinois probably grows soft winter wheat which is low protein, more of a pastry flour than a bread flour. You can use it in small amounts >20% in breads or use it for biscuits and pie crust. Straight from the mill really needs to be picked over, winnowed and picked again in my book. It's good for chickens, but clean it up for people food.

We got our white winter wheat from a food coop that is now out of business -- we ordered a lot before they folded,
then I found I can't tolerate sizeable quanties of wheat or rye.

YMMV,

Sara in IN

homebirtha · #12 11/26/05, 09:06 PM

We have the Family Grain Mill. It's the third one down here:
http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com/index.asp#Nutrimill

It was the most reasonably priced and so far, it has held up great. If I had it do over though, I'd go ahead and get the motorized base. But the hand crank is fairly easy to use.

I usually buy the wheat berries at my local health food store. I store it in the freezer until I'm ready to grind it. That keeps the buggies out.

norris · #13 11/26/05, 09:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TnAndy

If you want a hand mill, the Country Living Mill is a good one. We have one, and in a non-power situation, this would be what we would use.

http://waltonfeed.com/country1.html

But for fast grinding, we use a Vita-mix blender......it will turn a couple cups of wheat berries to dust in a minute or so flat.....makes a great whole wheat flour.

We get wheat in 5 gallon buckets from Walton Feed. It will keep forever.

TnAndy,
Thanks for your input. I was just looking at the Waltons feed site.
http://waltonfeed.com/cart/all.html#C
Which kind do you use or recommend for bread?
They have hard white wheat and hard red organic. I prefer organic products but Sara says hard red wheat makes hockey pucks.

halfpint · #14 11/26/05, 10:41 PM

I use a whisper mill and order our wheat from my food co-op. If you are not used to real whole wheat bread, I would suggest you go for the white wheat, and possibly even begin baking your bread half wheat and half white flour. This is what I did to get my family used to the wheat bread. How you bake your bread will also have an effect on your loaves. Do you plan to hand mix, use a mixer (I use the Bosch) or use a bread machine? I like the nutty flavor of the hard red wheat, but still usually use half of it with the white wheat. I don't even buy flour anymore and keep a stock of soft white wheat for my other baking needs.

You'll need to prevent bugs when buying in bulk. The best way is to purchase a few 5 gal buckets (approx 45 lbs) at first, then after that purchase the bags but put them in the buckets that you purchased initially. Stick a few bay leaves in the top of them and that should prevent any bugs. Note that rats can chew through the plastic buckets if you keep them in an area that may have rats. Rather than open the large bucket every time I need flour, I put berries in an empty pretzel jar (purchased at Sams a long time ago) that is about 2 gallons in size and only when this is empty do I have to open my bucket of wheat.
Dawn

LittleJohn · #15 11/26/05, 11:05 PM

Bison newsletter had a good article on the Corona mill a couple weeks ago thought I would post it. I havent gotten one yet but plan to the price is right and corn is easier to grow. He mentions that you need to run wheat through more than once to get a good flour from it. Oh and Wiseman has it on sale for $28.95. http://www.wisementrading.com/grainmills.htm

Anyway here is the article:

Contact is jimd303@wmconnect.com
Web Site is www.bisonnewsletter.com
Subscribe at www.bison.tridentlist.com

Contents copyrighted 2005 James M Dakin ( non-profit use allowed )

CORONA GRAIN MILL
Still the best and the cheapest

The Corona grain mill is not the perfect tool. It is a simple, rugged ugly tool that works well forever. It is cheap. The intent was for poor Third World markets. It was not designed for spoiled rich fat out of shape guys playing at Walter Mitty fantasies of surviving a nuclear holocaust but for desperately poor farmers needing to grind their own corn. The mill is not even designed for grinding wheat, but for corn. Corn is what grows well in tropical Central and Southern America, not wheat. And all those poor bastards south of the border ( those not dealing drugs to increase Uncle Sam's unwilling economic aid ) are going to be growing corn for subsidence, and the Corona is made for them. Some Hippie brought one back with a load of weed and started using it to grind up wheat and it did the job but not very well. With corn the mill turns out flour in no time, as with coffee beans or soybeans. But not wheat. With wheat you must start on the coarse setting and grind your kernels. Then tighten the setting and run through again. And again. And most of the time again. It usually takes four runs to get store quality fine flour, and even then you still need to have a screen to separate a few husks that refused to grind. This is where the Corona gets a bad rap, the extra amount of work involved in grinding wheat into flour. But the Corona will last a lifetime. Literally. A one time purchase and you never have to worry about it again ( although a back-up is never a bad idea if the purpose is to eat mostly wheat in your diet ). One time, $50, and you never have to buy store bought whole wheat flour again. Or a coffee grinder, or corn meal. You can buy other brands for about the same price for a manual grinder. The Back To Basics mill comes to mind. Smaller, lighter, much easier grinding. But it is not heavy duty. It most definitely will not last a lifetime. Even on the first use the small plastic washer it uses starts to wear. If you use wheat for your survival food stash, you need to first use wheat every day to assure yourself you can eat it, plus your body can handle it. So you need more than a part time grinder unless you just buy it for barter. That way it takes up much less room and is lighter, and one should bring a very pretty penny after a collapse.

A healthy diet now will not only strengthen your immune system for times of stress or epidemic outbreaks ( one thing to keep in mind about the current government panic about the bird flu virus is that Donald Rumsfeld holds a lot of stock in the company that makes Tamiflu ) but gets your body used to whole grains and legumes. I stress a wheat survival stash as a Better Than Nothing solution. If you are poor, wheat is only fifteen cents a pound at the feed store. But to get a complete protein, you need to also eat legumes with whole grains. I don't stress their importance because of their higher economic cost ( fifty cents a pound at the grocery store ), as well as their limited shelf life compared to wheat, but after you stock enough wheat you really should try to put aside enough legumes ( pinto beans, white beans, etc. ) to provide a better balanced nutrition than wheat alone provides. At least a six month supply to get you through isolation periods or until the garden produces or wild game is available. Don't stockpile five years worth if beans aren't normally in your diet, but buy enough super sized bags to provide balance in your diet. Even if you hate beans ( although must of us like pork & beans or Boston baked beans ) you can still grind up both beans and grains, boil as a porridge, or even let the gruel sit overnight until hard and then slice and fry up for a very tasty, cheap, filling and healthy breakfast. And the Corona grain mill is perfect for oily beans. Grinds them up just fine. If you invest in a mill and have grain and beans stockpiled and in regular daily use, you will never starve for lack of money. A bean and grain and potato diet ( of course with some of the grain sprouted ) will keep you alive and healthy very cheap. You can eat for pennies a day ( or less if you have a garden ). Even if prices double due to the increase in fertilizer and fuel costs you can still feed the family under a dollar a day in an economic meltdown scenario ( assuming little bulk buying, or little purchasing now while it is still very cheap ). In that case a grinder bought now for under $50 would be a life preserver to your family.

Right now, after fuel costs have come down from Katrina shortages, shipping costs are still reasonable. Shipping a grain mill will run you from six to twelve dollars on average, depending on the company you buy from. The best buy I have seen for a Corona is $45 after shipping from WiseMenTrading.com. I would strongly recommend you search their Web site and seriously consider buying the mill. Even if all you ever do is prepare the grain/ bean fried mush breakfast the money you save, the energy you feel and the health benefits of one meal a day of whole food with fiber you get will more than pay for your grinder purpose. Then, if trouble ever lurks on the horizon, you can haul butt down to your local feed store and buy every sack of edible grain they carry and not only be prepared for whatever emergency might happen but you will then also actually have a means of preparing that grain. Two rocks are not a good improvised grain grinder, they are just a good way of breaking your teeth. Buy a grinder now, before any panic sends the lemmings into cyberspace where they strip the proverbial walls in seconds. There are other Corona mills out there for sale and they are at much more reasonable prices than they were pre Y2K. Just do a Google search for "corona grain mill" and you will find plenty of sites selling the item. Half of these will not tell you the cost until after you complete the order form so as to compute the shipping costs, but just assume up to about $12 to get a ballpark figure when shopping around.

If you are still too strapped for cash ( and you married guys know who I'm talking about ) you can buy a Corona generic version for only $25 after shipping. If you go to the Web site MajorSurplusNSurvival.com you will find their grinder for a mere $17 plus shipping. My cost to ship from their warehouse in California to Nevada was about $8. But I have had clothing shipped from Yankeeland which was bulkier but lighter for about the same amount, so your cost might be higher or not but not by much. The order calculator will tell you how much shipping will be. I recommend these guys. I ordered from them for Y2K, and recently, and never did I have one problem ( one time they even called my house to get instructions about an order they couldn't ship as I didn't have an email address at the time ). Another source for a generic mill is NorthernTool.com at about the same price after shipping, and a great source for inexpensive tools for you Tim Taylor's out there. If you don't want to be bothered with the bulk and weight of a Corona ( and the heavy duty grinding ) you can order a Back To Basic mill from Emergency Essentials. I do not recommend this mill for heavy use post-Apocalypse, but it is fine for a functioning economy with mail order so you can replace the washers it uses. It really is much easier to use than the Corona, it's just no where near as robust a design ( There Ain't No Free Lunch- it lasts forever and is hard to use, or it's easy to use and won't last long ). The cost is somewhere around $60. Emergency Essentials ( BePrepared.com ) is a great company, another one I have always had great service from. They use a flat rate shipping even for their grains. It is really nice to know the final cost of a product and not have to wait for the semi to pull up out front and present a bill to you ( although to be fair, anything over a few hundred pounds needs to be shipped by freight ).

If at all possible, get yourself a Corona Mill. If you can't, get a generic version. If you can afford it, get a back-up generic version or just two of the generics and stash one elsewhere in case something happens to one such as theft. You could buy four generic mills for less than the cost of a surplus rifle, keep two for yourself and save two for trading. In a scenario where trade is disrupted seriously and the economy implodes, a grain mill could easily go for an once of gold. By buying today at $25 with gold going for over $450, your investment goes up almost twenty times. Try getting that on the stock market. Lets face it, if you are stockpiling years of wheat you are gambling on a long shot to begin with. Might as well stockpile grinders as trade goods for after the last ship sales from China since we shipped all our factories and expertise over there years ago and have nothing to fall back on. Some goods we stockpile are toys and can be improvised by low tech, such as LED lights taking the place of candles. Others we can improvise, such as using corrosive primer material after the store bought primers are all used up. Some tools we need to buy now for lack of any other option. A grain grinder is one of those. Buy it now while you can painlessly and cheaply.
END ARTICLE

Jeff54321 · #16 11/26/05, 11:17 PM

I use a Jupiter Grain Mill and it works wonderfully. Because whole grains begin to go rancid as soon as you grind them, I only grind what I need at the moment. I buy organically grown wheat, rye, and spelt.

Jenn · #17 11/27/05, 06:26 AM

I have a Retsel purchased for Y2K- elec motor but handop option. I had plenty of wheat in old baby formula cans (frozen a few weeks to kill bugs) and plastic buckets with dry ice to remove oxygen as I seald them left over in 2000. Now in UK I am unhappy with Brit wheat I've found in health food stores and couldn't find decent corn meal or dry corn- actually ordered 50 lbs. hard red organic wheat from Bob's red mill http://www.bobsredmill.com/ along with 25 lbs blue and 25 yellow organic corn. Postage much more than price of course! In US I bought from http://www.ozarkcoop.com/home/ in TX and FL on their delivery routes.

I can't make decent wholewheat bread in my machine- it's usually a flat brick- though the new bread maker I have is workign out some better. Our favorite (two loaves demolished this week) is 1/4 to 1/2 whol wheat with some crushed or precooked wheat berries in it. Last grind I rough ground so a lot of half grains, partly crushed, come out in the coarse flour. I now use 1 cup of this soaked in the water for the recipe for a few hours before adding bread four and the rest of ingredients. Usually I boil whole wheat berries but have to weigh dry berries to figure out how much water is in the boiled ones to keep the recipe from being too wet. Guess I can add some properly milled ww flour to this bread recipe and use a bit less (white) bread flour.

Hip_Shot_Hanna · #18 11/27/05, 07:22 AM

I used to use a Vita-mix to grind wheat that was going to be made immediately into bread.

I used Prairie Gold wheat, which is not as dark as red winter wheat, but still has a very high protein and gluten content. The bread was WONDERFUL.

I bought it from Montana Wheat Farm - here's the link

http://www.wheatmontana.com/store/in...03f6fa99498ef7

I highly recommend it as it is not as heavy - either in taste or rising qualities, but is very good wheat. They also sell a variety called Bronze Chief if you want the darker and heavier wheat.

I found that with the Prairie Gold no extra flour of any type, nor gluten was needed.

Hope that is helpful. I no longer have my Vita-mix, which I liked because it was American made of Stainless steel and guaranteed for seven years! It did much much more than grind wheat, but I would hate to use one off the grid. It had a very powerful motor.. could actually take wooden blocks and make sawdust out of them. :O Back when I bought it, even the container that you put the food of whatever type in was also stainless steel, looks like that's all changed. Pity...

http://www.vitamix.com/household/pro...000/index.html

Bruce in NE · #19 11/27/05, 10:19 AM

"But for fast grinding, we use a Vita-mix blender......it will turn a couple cups of wheat berries to dust in a minute or so flat.....makes a great whole wheat flour."

I too use a vita-mix for flour and it does a great job. But one minute would reduce 2 cups of flour literally to dust! 15 seconds is enuff.

And don't believe the company claim that you need a separate "dry"
container to grind grain, for an extra hundred bucks. My "wet" container does just fine.

norris · #20 11/27/05, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bruce in NE

And don't believe the company claim that you need a separate "dry"
container to grind grain, for an extra hundred bucks. My "wet" container does just fine.

It's possible that the dry container has ball bearings. The wet containers on most blenders have "oilite" bushings and will get hot if you dry grind. Next time you grind grain remove the container and feel the shaft/bearing area underneath to see if it's hot.