Our homemade bread

Readers often ask about the details of milling wheat. Specifically, they want to know what kind of mill I use, what kind of wheat berries, and where I get the wheat.

Grinding stone

I have milled wheat in three different ways. Contrary to popular opinion, I have not milled wheat with a Neolithic stone mill. No, I don’t smash the wheat between two rocks … er … not yet. Should my children read this post, I guarantee you they will be in the back yard grinding wheat by bashing rocks together. Worse they will expect me to bake bread with it else I witness quivering poochy lips. That is precisely why they will not read this post. Now back to our topic at hand.

The Vita Mix

I used my Vita Mix machine to mill flour. It was my first attempt to mill flour. The results: Awe, wonder and a lethal loaf of whole wheat bread. It would have made great self defense.  Hit someone on the head with it.  You get the idea. 

Seeing hard wheat kernels transform into soft fluffy flour dazzled this pioneer wanna be. The children were mesmerized too. After filling the small hopper full several times, I finally had enough to make a loaf of bread. A few hours later, I opened the oven and extracted a perfectly brown brick. It resembled bread. It smelled like bread. It was not edible. I tossed it outside. Could have killed a cat or an unsuspecting chicken had it landed on them. The children still tell the story of this first loaf of bread to anyone who will listen. In 5000 years, archeologists will dig on my farm uncovering this relic, I am sure. It was just that hard.

Seriously, the Vita Mix produced a coarse flour. The machine heated the flour too which destroys the integrity of the bread. The flavor is poor with flour that is ground with high heat. Further, the enzymes making the bread more digestible are destroyed. While I jest about the brick-like qualities of my first bread, I do not think it was the Vita-Mix at issue. I was a novice bread baker. You could make bread with the Vita Mix, but the flour will be course and it will lack flavor.

A customer offered me a Whisper Mill to grind wheat. The machine grinds the wheat by blasting the berries with steel burrs. The machine was relatively quiet, but the flour was hot again. I made bread but it lacked the nutty flavor. Another customer milled wheat for me and gave me flour from an All Grains Mill. The flour was very fine and the breads from this flour were divine. I compared the flour from the Whisper Mill to the All Grains and the difference was remarkable. I abandoned the Whisper Mill.

The All Grains Mill

I purchased an All Grains Mill second hand from a milk customer in Kansas. It is a stone mill that grinds wheat at a very low temperature. This is vital to producing a bread that has a nutty flavor. The taste was so notable that customers from Kansas tracked me down in Missouri wondering what wheat berries I used to get such a good flavor. They bought flour from us in Kansas and simply could not replicate the flavor on their own. My former customers assumed it was the type of wheat berry that gave our flour such a good flavor. It was not the wheat but how it was milled.

When my friend from Kansas visited a few months ago, she brought several orders for flour with her. The flour from this mill was that good. Further, customers from Kansas pleaded with me to bring them flour should I visit Kansas on a vacation.

I like the All Grains Mill. It is pricey and noisy but the flavor of the breads I make from this machine are mouth watering and addictive. I have often wondered if a manual wheat grinder would produce similar results. My beau has a mill that is a manual grinder. When time permits, I may experiment and compare the quality of flour. I will share my findings.

Types of wheat berries

I use hard red wheat and spring white wheat. Hard red wheat has a nutty flavor but is less pliable in making breads. The spring white wheat gives me a little better rise with the bread. I used to combine one part red wheat to two parts white. In early articles about wheat, I learned from a reader that a fifty/fifty combination would give the same results. I now mix half red and half white wheat.

Recently, I have been milling barley mixing it in the flour. It is notably whiter then the other flour. It makes a nice addition to the bread too.

Where do I get my wheat berries?

Before I moved to Missouri, I bought my wheat berries at Glenn’s Bulk Food in Hutchinson, Kansas. They are a Mennonite owned store. They sell a variety of spices, flours, and wheat. I bought them by 50 pound bags. After meeting my beau, I have not had to buy wheat.  I barter with him bread for berries.

I would love to hear from readers about their milling experiences.

Udderly His,

The Kansas Milkmaid