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Making Hand Ground Whole Wheat Homestead Bread And Cereal

Making Hand Ground Whole Wheat Bread

and Hot Cereal

 

 

Now that we have half a ton of whole grain at the homestead, we can finally grind our own flour for the best taste and maximum nutrients. When you buy flour at the store, you are getting something that was machine processed long ago.

 

A Batch Of Hand Ground Flour
A Full Batch Of Hand Ground Flour

 

Consider wheat for example. The wheat germ is ground off and sold separately at quite expensive prices. Then the rest of the grain is ground into a fine powder and then chemically bleached to give you that perfect white color you are used to. But now there are no nutrients left in the flour so they add artificial vitamins into the stuff to give it some nutritional benefits. Plain white flour is a pure carbohydrate which goes directly to your waistline quickly.

 

Fresh Hand Ground Whole Wheat Bread
Fresh Ground Whole Wheat Bread

 

Even whole wheat flour has lost some of its nutrients by the time you buy it and get around to using it. It must be processed at the factory, packaged, shipped and then stocked on shelves. Eventually you buy it and take it home. But wheat flour starts to lose it nutrients the moment it is ground. Once you bake your bread, it has lost a lot of its nutritional value and freshness.

 

But when you grind whole grain wheat at home, the germ remains in the flour. The wheat germ contains a lot of nutrients, which is why it is so expensive to purchase separately. When you grind your flour fresh each day, you get all the nutrients from the grain.

 

It has been said that gluten intolerance actually comes from the highly processed white flour and many people who cannot eat white flour can eat fresh ground whole wheat flour.

 

 

 

 

I have a Back to Basics hand crank grain mill which I use for fine flour. I have another hand crank grinder for coarser grains like corn. For now I am using wheat so the Back to Basics mill is perfect for the job. I filled the hopper and the whole family took a turn at grinding out our flour. It is a fun project for the entire family.

 

Filling Up The Flour Mill
Filling The Flour Mill Hopper

 

I have not used this in a long time so I was surprised that it can produce about 2.5 to 3 cups of flour per hopper full. This is enough for two average loaves of bread.

 

We mixed up the ingredients for our bread (you can see all that in the video link below). While the bread dough was rising I took some time to grind up some wheat and rice mixed together to make some hot cereal. I put about half wheat and half rice in the hopper and churned it out. We cooked up some right away by boiling some water in a pot and stirring in the flour. Once it was cooked, we added some honey. My daughter also likes milk in hers. We all loved it. This is fresh hot cereal. It does not get any fresher than this.

 

Family Fun Grinding Flour
Fun For The Whole Family

 

When our bread dough had risen enough, my wife cut it into two halves and put those into two bread pans. This she set aside to rise some more and then later she put it into the oven to bake.

 

When we pulled the bread out of the oven though, we noticed that it was about half the thickness of a normal loaf of bread. We later realized that we should have used a lot more water and let it work for as long as three hours to allow the yeast to work on the grain more fully. We will do better next time.

 

But we did enjoy the bread very much. The taste was great and the texture was a bit grainy but we liked it. This was likely the wheat germ that we felt in our mouths. It is pure nutrients so we loved it that much more. The bread was light and fluffy though and not heavy as we had expected. We ate 3/4 of a loaf with dinner that evening so it must have been good enough.

 

This was our first experiment with pure hand ground whole wheat flour though and we will get better with time. We also plan to make our own cereal and pasta from now on using our own grains. It will be a lot of fun so stay tuned for updates.

 

 

Watch Today's Video Here

 

 

Get The Back To Basics Flour Mill

 

Victoria Hand Crank Flour Mill

 

 

 

 





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Troy Reid

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