I was chatting with my neighbor last spring when he informed me that he was growing hard and strong bread wheat under contract for a major bakery company. I was able to watch it grow for the next several months and was pleased to see it grow and mature well in late summer.
I went out to see how it was harvested and again chatting with my friendly farmer when he asked me, “Did you know of a suitable mill to produce bread flour for your farm’s coffee using your own grain?”
I agreed to look it up for him and told him I wouldn’t mind trying it myself, go ahead and help yourself get some grain from the trailer in the field, he said, so I went up and picked up a sack of grain to try. grinding a little myself.
When I got home ready to start the task, I measured about 1.5 pounds of grain on a sieve, then proceeded to clean the seed and remove as many small weed seeds as I could by shaking and tapping the sieve to allow the seed to work its way up to the bottom of the sieve and falls off. There were also quite a few kernels with shells still attached due to a small percentage of the kernels not being crushed enough in the old faithful combine to remove all the stubborn shells.
When I was satisfied that the bean was clean enough and free of weed seeds, I put a few ounces in the coffee grinder, which was on the wall, and proceeded to grind the flour in the grinder.
I must clarify that it is a grinder that has a manual rotary mill, which grinds the coffee beans and grinds them to the desired fineness by means of an adjustment screw to control the clearance between the rotating solid grinding shaft and the wall of the grinder.
So I was able to produce a fairly fine whole grain flour with the coffee grinder, note that it was not one of the rotary blade grinders for spices etc, but a proper grinding action.
This machine was made by Spong and is bolted to the wall in our utility room, and I was able to grind 1.5 pounds in about 7 minutes of continuous grinding, which wasn’t too much work as long as you had a reasonably strong arm. .
When I baked the bread, I found that the moisture level in the fresh grain meant that I had to reduce the amount of warm water added to the dough mixture to end up with a loaf, which rose to the required level of domed top in baking. . can, a bit of trial and error was fine because although not all were perfect to look at, they were delicious to eat, with a very nutty flavor
Eventually I went online to Scotts of Stow, who had a hand grinder with a similar action to the coffee grinder but with more capacity and a longer handle that gave better control of the flour sorting. I had looked at some very fancy ones on the net, but decided Scott’s would be a good fit for trial.
If you need a less “whole grain” loaf, you can run the finished flour through a strainer to remove as much fiber as you want and end up with a plain white flour.
I use a fairly standard recipe for the bread that comes with my Panasonic Bread maker, which I have had for over ten years using flour bought from the supermarkets. I have tried all kinds of bread mixes and flours mainly organic whole grains, but I have read that there’s nothing like freshly ground flour baked right out of the box, it seems like it tastes very nutty but I may be biased by my own pride in home baked breads, apparently the natural oils in the grain evaporate a certain amount afterwards of grinding. And during storage, a USB is so cool that it is worth the effort.
One thing I almost always do is add a couple tablespoons of mixed seeds like sunflower, sesame, pumpkin, poppy, and even some pine nuts for added interest and texture, sometimes I add a little flax or hemp seeds for an extra bite. and crunchy, which add up to a very healthy option with all the nutrients you need for a healthy and flavorful toast.
Recently in the last week I started to bake some pitta bread which is super quick and really worth it and even though I ate them for lunch the day they were baked I didn’t get any bad digestive results due to the freshness of bread. I usually leave bread overnight to eat the next day to avoid any episode caused by freshly baked bread, but this freshly ground freshly baked pita bread was excellent; and ready in no time, it bakes in 8/9 minutes, which is great if you run out of bread.
So if you have the opportunity, try; Bread wheat is available by mail order at several locations with a wide variety of grains to choose from.
