Grinding Your Own Flour: The Tightwad Method

As promised in my recent article about bread baking for the absolute beginner (not for dummies... if you want to bake bread you can't be dumb), I'm going to detail here what I do to get absolutely top of the line, REAL whole wheat flour. This flour loses nearly none of the nutrition present in the wheat kernels when they were harvested, because it hasn't been stored on someone's store shelf for most of a year. You don't have to pay extra for packaging or brand names, and using the blender method, you get the fabulous byproduct of great-tasting hot cereal as well. In my next article I will detail the reasons behind grinding your own flour, and why it could add years to your life. (Well, maybe not...but maybe.)

What you do have to do is put in a little time. However, it's a lot like the bread itself in that most of the time is spent in allowing it to rest. Actual time in the kitchen grinding and sifting the flour comes to 20 minutes at most.

First, your tools. These will be very simple, and very very cheap. I developed the method during one of the lowest financial times I have ever had, where I was going through change to buy diapers and milk, so it's on the severe end of tightwaddery. You could, of course, spend upwards of $100 getting a grain mill, and I do intend to move up to one - an unpowered model which will allow me to grind our flour even if the electricity goes out - but for those of us who don't have an extra $100, this is a good place to start. I went to the secondhand store and found a blender for $8. I recommend getting a cheap blender just for this purpose even if you already have a blender, because I don't believe the manufacturers intended them to be used for flour making and it's possible the blender could wear out early. I haven't noticed a problem with mine yet, but if and when the poor thing finally dies, I'll go back to the secondhand store and get another one. Also, the flour must sit and rest at times while grinding, so the blender will be tied up for quite a long time; if you use your blender for other purposes, it could get annoying to have the flour always in your way.

Next, you'll need a sieve with fine holes. Your regular crank drum flour sifter will not be adequate, because the larger particles will still be able to fit through the holes in a drum sifter. I actually use a bacon splatter shield from the dollar store which I have bent into a shallow U shape. The screen holes are the perfect size and the large area makes the sifting go very quickly. Your last three tools are the large salad type bowl I recommended for the bread making, a large spoon like a soup spoon, preferably fairly heavy, and a smaller bowl - cereal bowl size - to put the farina into once it is sifted from the flour.

There are several kinds of wheat you could get for this. It depends very much on where you are located in the country. We are lucky enough to have bags of wheat sold in the baking aisle in our local Wal-Mart, but for those who don't have that luxury, wheat is sold over the Internet by several different sites, such as Homegrown Harvest and Walton Feed (despite the name, they specialize in whole grains and long-storage foods for human consumption). These sites do add shipping costs, but you may be able to avoid that by finding out if there is a grain elevator in an area local to you. Often, the grain farmer will sell you small amounts of a bushel or less; and it may be possible to build a long term relationship with the farmer if you plan to make whole wheat a permanent part of your diet. I have a disadvantage in that the wheat sold at my local store is soft white winter wheat, which has a lower protein content. For this reason I have to add vital gluten to my bread recipe. There are many other kinds of wheat which are better for breadmaking, such as durum, hard red, and hard white. Durum is usually used more for pasta, but if this is all you can get, try it. It will grind without trouble; the differences will show up in the bread recipe, which you may need to tweak a little, but not having used durum wheat I can't specify what would be necessary beyond saying that the high protein content of durum would probably eliminate the need for gluten. Also, you may need to blend the flour with white flour if the bread is too heavy.

The method of grinding the wheat is very simple, and follows step by step:

Pour about 2 cups of wheat into your blender. You won't need the top on because the wheat will not jump out, and it helps to keep an eye on the action. Blend at the highest speed for a couple of minutes. The rule of thumb for how long to grind the wheat has less to do with time than it does temperature. The important thing to remember is that you mustn't allow the flour to heat up for long. The friction of the blender blades will tend to heat the flour, and heat will destroy the nutrients in the wheat, which is what you are trying to preserve. Check thus: While blending, keep a finger on the base of the blender carafe, so you can feel the temperature begin to rise. When it is nearly hot, turn the blender off. The wheat will have mostly ground at this point, but there will be a few whole grains left atop the mixture. Cover the carafe and let it cool. This can take as long as an hour. Check the temperature by touching the bottom of the carafe when you think it has been long enough. When cool, repeat the first step. This time the flour will begin to look much finer and will start to stick together in a cylinder at the outside of the carafe, then fall in chunks towards the center while blending is going on. Cease blending when nearly hot; let rest again until cool. Grind a third time; this will be your final grind. This time when the flour is nearly hot, you will see that it resists falling down into the center well while blending. When this point is reached the grind is done.

Next, the flour must be sifted. The blender will have left some large particles in with the flour, which must now be separated out. I sift mine over my bread mixing bowl, which is just the diameter of the bacon splatter shield I mentioned earlier. To do this, pour half the ground wheat into the sieve. Use the heavy spoon to push the wheat around on the sieve until you have only large particles left, which look barely dusty. These particles will remind you of cream of wheat, and indeed, they make the best hot cereal I have ever tasted; I eat the hot cereal without any sweetening, just milk, because I love the taste. (My husband thinks I'm nuts.) Pour the farina particles off into the cereal bowl and repeat with the other half of the mixture. If you are using a different shape of sieve, of course, use the portion size which will fit into your sieve. The only really vital thing is that the mesh is fine enough to separate the particles out.

To store the flour, I use a coffee can; it holds enough flour for two batches of bread and seals securely. Use as you would any white flour. Flour from soft white wheat, such as I use, can be substituted one for one for white flour; flour from hard wheats may need to be blended with white flour if it bakes up too heavily. Your two cups of wheat will gain some volume, grinding up into 1 1/2 cups or more of flour and about 1 cup of farina for cereal. If you find yourself with more farina than you can use, you can put it in the next flour grinding, replacing 1 cup of wheat with 1 cup of farina.

To make the hot cereal, you will need 4 cups of liquid (water, milk, or a combination) to 1 cup of farina. Put on the stove over a low heat until it reaches the thickness you want, probably at least 20 minutes of cook time. As tastes will vary, you will need to time it at first to know how long you should cook it.

Using real whole wheat flour, not recombined reconstituted white flour with enough bran to look brown, you will know you're doing the best you can for your family, and not trusting governmental mandates and mass manufacture to do it for you. For something this basic, it's good to have it in your own hands.