We've sort of increased our prep spending this month

Guess Joe's seeing what I am and has really started getting into preps. I have a lot of goodies on their way. We ordered a cream separater about a week ago, this week we ordered the pump and seal vacuum sealer and today he ordered me a manual grain mill. I think he said it was a country time grain mill, but not sure. He ordered a few different burrs for it and also ordered 50 pounds of hard red wheat and 50 pounds of hard white wheat. I don't have a clue about any of that, but figure I'll learn. Any advice any of you can give on grinding your own grains would be appreciated. I want to have flour for both baking and for a thickening agent in sauces and gravies.

Congrats on your grain mill and other supplies. Are you baking with both red and white wheat currently? If not start slow with the red, it is a much stronger flavor than the white. You're going to want soft white wheat for pastries, it's lower protein/gluten content is a must for things that are supposed to be more tender. I use soft for pancakes, waffles, biscuits, muffins etc.

I would also suggest some vital wheat gluten or dough enhancer to help achieve a higher rise to whole grain breads. Using eggs in some of my bread recipes have helped too.

I'll give you our favorite pancake recipe to get you going.

Amish Hearty Hotcakes
Makes about 12 (6 inch) pancakes
*1 1/4 Cups All Purpose Flour***3/4 Cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
*1 Cup Quick Cooking Oats****2 tsp Baking Powder****1 tsp Salt****1 tsp Baking Soda****2 tsp Cinnamon****1/4 Cup Packed Brown Sugar****2 Cups Buttermilk****2 TBS Vegetable Oil****2 Eggs, beaten****1/4 to 1/2 Cup Walnuts, Chopped****

Combine flours, oats, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and 2 tsp cinnamon in a mixing bowl. In a separate bowl combine the buttermilk, eggs, and oil. Stir wet ingredients into dry mixture until blended. DO NOT over mix. Stir in nuts, if desired. Pour 1/3 C. batter onto HOT, lightly greased griddle. Turn pancakes over when bubbles form on top. Cook until second side is done. Serve with orange marmalade or maple syrup.

Substitution for buttermilk: Stir 2 TBS of lemon juice into 2 cups of milk, let sit to for 2 minutes. Milk will thicken and curdle.

To make quick cooking oats, I just grind some rolled oats in my food processor.

These are very filling and not too sweet, YUMMY!
I make these as gift mixes for the holidays, I package them in cellophane bags that I seal with my bag sealer.

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I also like to grind popcorn kernals for cornmeal, it tastes SO MUCH different than the stuff you can buy in the stores. I actually grind mine with my Kitchenaid grinder because my other grinder makes it into too fine of flour. You'll have to play with the settings and burrs to see how fine they will grind.

Make sure you research which set of burrs to use to grind what type of grain. I remember reading you can damage/clog some burrs by grinding the wrong grain with them. It had to do with the oil content of different grains.

I have a really tasty thin crust pizza dough recipe if you are interested in it. It is made with part hard red, hard white and all purpose flours. It makes a very crispy crust. I'm still working on my medium/thicker crust recipe, haven't quite got it to where I like it best.

Way to Go Sonshine!!!!

We store, and use, the following wheat berries.

Durum wheat berries: pasta,
Soft white spring wheat: pastry flour
Hard white winter wheat: lighter breads (kind of a general purpose flour)
Hard red winter wheat: darker old world type breads
Kamut: ancient wheat/grain
Spelt: very low gluten ancient wheat/grain

This is subjective AKA personal opinion... but MissKitty and I like the taste of the Spelt the best. In fact we milled/ground a couple cups of Spelt berries this morning and MissKitty cooked up a stack of Waffles for breakfast. Meetin' friend, Mrs. W., even makes pasta using spelt as her husband is very glutton intolerant.

We also store, and use, Buckwheat, Oats, Rye and Barley berries/grouts (or whatever they might be called). We bought some Quinoa to experiment with and plan to pick up some Millet and Amaranth and try them also.

And lest I forget... we store and use Organic yellow corn (AKA field corn) and yellow popcorn. Many folks mention they prefer milling popcorn instead of the field corn for corn meal but, and this is purely my personal opinion, LOL!... I like both! Can't go wrong with either one. Fresh corn bread made with freshly ground/milled corn meal... ummm good, makes a persons mouth water just to think about it..... Bought some type of indian corn seed to plant and try in the garden also but still a few weeks early to plant that.

It's been very enjoyable, in a "basic sort of way" trying and learning a little about how to use and enjoy using all these grains.

--Dwight

Thanks for the recipes and advice. I know I'm going to have tons of questions as I start grinding our own grains. The reason we started out with the hard wheat berries is because of a post I saw on HT. I think it might have been Cabin Fever that said they got a wonderful all purpose type flour by combining the two. I didn't realize I'd have to add gluten. I always thought that flour just naturally produced it.

We do plan on grinding field corn (truckers corn?) for cornmeal. I also have some seed for popcorn, so may have to give that a try too. Might actually try combining to two to see what comes up.


This part of prepping is all very new to me. We have been buying all purpose flour and vacumm sealing it for our preps, but since the berries are more stable for storing, we decided to give it a try.

Sometimes I'm overwhelmed with all the things I want to learn and have to remind myself to take one step at a time. Just a couple of months ago we made our first home made pasta. Everyone LOVED it. Next week-end we're going to attempt our first cheese, mozerrela, since it seems the easiest.

When the berries come in, I'll be posting tons of questions, I'm sure.

Post away, if I know the answer I'll jump in with it, if not we'll both be searching for the answers.

The difference with the wheat berries and all purpose flour is the different protein content and the bran. Whole grains make for a heavier loaf of bread. You are correct that all flour does contain gluten, however whole grain flour requires more gluten to achieve a good rise. The heavier the grain the heavier the baked product's results will be if nothing is added to achieve lift. This also why you would need soft wheat for pastries and more tender items such as biscuits. Hard wheat berries will yield a chewier product, soft will yield a more tender product, not just the crust, but throughout the entire product. Kind of like comparing whole wheat bread to store bought white bread.

You can lighten up your whole wheat by sifting some of the bran out of your home milled flour. To do this don't grind it into a very fine powder the first time. Do a more coarse grind, sift the bran out and regrind the flour to get something that will resemble all purpose flour. I have found it is just easier to add some all purpose flour to whatever I'm making. You'll just have to play with your recipes to get the correct proportions of whole grain to all purpose, whatever suits your tastes and how well the two or three types of flour perform together.

If you are used to eating very dark colored store bought wheat bread then you may already have aquired a taste for the red wheat. I'm still increasing the quantity of red in my home baked bread, my guys are still not ready for full red wheat, I don't think they ever will be.

Keep in mind when you use home ground flour for pasta and dumplings they will have a chewier texture as well, if you use hard wheat. It's a fine balance, you'll have to experiment with your recipes to get results that your family will like.

Right now the main bread we eat around here is sourdough bread. When we buy storebought, we usually buy whole wheat. Don't know if that makes a difference.

PATRICE IN IL wrote:It's a fine balance, you'll have to experiment with your recipes to get results that your family will like.

So true... enjoy the whole process of experimenting.

So much of this comes down to personal preferences/taste... We bought some gluten but, I guess, since I prefer the old world (darker / dense) kinds of breads to the lighter breads we haven't tried using it yet, but we will! This is an ongoing learning process.... I am wanting to try baking "Farmers Bread" like this in the following link but haven't yet because it's just the two of us and we have been thinking/testing more of the breads that we can use up the same day MissKitty bakes them since we, usually, can't finish a whole loaf before it becomes chicken food.....

http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/homemade-bread-zm0z10zsto.aspx?page=4

enjoy!

--Dwight

Can you freeze the Farmer's bread? My family is not big bread eaters, so we usually only go through two loaves of sourdough bread a week. If I make any more than that it has to go into the freezer. Of course, chickens and the goats love bread too. So, nothing really goes to waste around here. If we don't get it all eaten, I know that it'll provide food for my critters, who will in turn give us eggs or milk.

Sonshine wrote:Can you freeze the Farmer's bread?

I've not tried this bread yet but... I did freeze farmers bread when I lived in Germany and also I froze beefsteak rye bread when I was single. However,.... upon defrosting the only way I liked it was toasted.

--Dwight

Ok, thought I would ask. We don't eat a lot of bread, but do enjoy things like cinnamon bread, pizzas, ect. Ty likes grilled cheese sandwiches, and that's usually what we use the sourdough bread for, that and toast to go with my eggs, or french toast. I use to love going to the bakeries in Germany. They had a wonderful assortment. I really miss brochen. I've tried to make it before, but it just doesn't taste the same.

The bakery items from other countries will not taste the same because the butter and flour they use are flavored differently than here in the USA, it's an environmental thing.

Maybe that's why I could never get it to taste like it did over there. But I sure do miss brochen. Maybe I can find a way that is close enough. It's been so long since I've lived in Germany that I wouldn't remember it exactly, so a close resemblance may work.

I miss the Rye (roggen) Brotchen.... A little bakery in the Black Forrest sold Farmers bread baked using what they called (translated) "natural yeast", I'm thinking thats what we call sourdough. Sure was tasty!!!!

A site with some recipes, including Brotchen, follows: http://www.germanways.com/Deutsch_recipes.htm

--Dwight

Dwight, thanks for the link. I can tell from just a glance at it that's it one that I'll be spending some time in.