I'm away from home just now but when I return at the end of the month (7/18) there should be a flour grinder waiting for me. I suspect I will be making updates to this blog for years as I discover the joys of producing and using my own flour. What have I discovered so far.
Apparently threshed and winnowed wheat berries (grain) will last for decades if kept, even at room temperature, as long as they are kept dry. I remember something I read many years ago. Somewhere, I can't remember where, there are some people that make grain storage bins from ferro-cement, buried in the ground with the removed soil making a berm around the entrance. The bins are conical in shape getting wider toward the bottom. They look like the early re-entery vehicles from the space program.
Grain is alive. It uses Oxygen and produces Carbon dioxide. Apparently when the grain is stored this way, any insects, mice and anything that needs oxygen to survive dies. The grain is preserved this way for very long periods.
Some "modern" folks apparently use a plastic liner for the grain. Critical is to have the grain below 7% moisture for long preservation. Lower still is better.
In contrast, when grain is ground, it's shelf life is very short unless refrigerated and even then should be used in a week or so. This is why the flour you buy at the store, even the brown flour, doesn't hold a patch on real whole meal flour for nutrition. When you used to take your wheat for grinding to the mill, bread really was the staff of life. However, in order to turn flour into a marketable commodity that would last, the germ had to be removed.
This is the little wheat plant that is tucked into the grain and while it is about 20% of the weight of the wheat berry, it contains some 80% of the nutrients. Using roller mills it was possible to sieve out the germ and make a flour that would last for a very long time and could be shipped long distances. However, as with so much of our food, we lost a huge amount by having this convenience.
By the way, if you want to see the germ (the little plant in a seed), it is most easily seen in a bean seed. A bean is a dicot which means that the endosperm is stored in two halves and they can be split to expose the germ. Soak a bean seed in water over night. In the morning, carefully remove the outer coat and split the two halves apart. You will see the little plant in between. You can even leave the bean in water that only partially covers it and let it sprout. The little plant grows and can be more easily seen as can the cotyledons. It is harder to do this with wheat but the principle is the same.
Back home.
I have my grinder but before I get into it's use, I must tell you some more I have discovered about our wheat supply. It is not pretty.
I have checked with a number of farmers and a grain merchant and the story remained the same with all of them. Apparently when grain is augured into the silos, a little Pirimiphosmethyl is added against insect pests. This can be added by the farmer, especially if he is going to store his wheat in his own silos for any length of time, and by the grain merchant and by the miller or all three. If you look up the rap sheet on this chemical, you find a recommendation that if you have any other choice of pesticide, use it. This stuff is nasty. Besides being highly poisonous (you guessed it) it is a carcinogen. It gets worse.
If the weeds have got away from the farmer toward harvest time and even earlier if the farmer is using 'roundup ready' wheat. he will roundup his field. Apparently the weeds will plug up his combine so he lets the roundup do its work and then harvests. Also killing the plant makes the grain ripen all at the same time.
So, not only do we have a known carcinogen pesticide in our wheat but a known carcinogenic herbicide. Roundup has not been proven to be a carcinogen to humans. After all, you can't feed Roundup to a hundred humans and not to a control group. No ethics committee would agree to such an experiment. But it has been proven to be carcinogenic to animals. I rest my case.
What is particularly annoying is that the use of the pesticide is so unnecessary. Enlightened farmers (and there are precious few of these) use Carbon dioxide. They have a connection at the bottom of their silo where they can attach a hose from a Carbon dioxide cylinder and fill the silo with this completely harmless gas. Problem solved. Any insect or their eggs that have come in with the grain dies.
Update March 2020
We now have two sources of organic wheat grown and stored without the use of either Roundup or Actilic (Pirimiphos methyl). We have waffle morning every Sunday with friends and Pitza Thursday, using the new Pizza oven I finished 6 months ago. In addition, we bake bread two or three times a week. The grinder which is a German model (Hawos) has worked flawlessly and it takes about two to three minutes to grind 500 grams of wheat.
You can't grind oily seeds such as pumpkin seeds but there is a trick. If you combine, say, 10% of these oily seeds with the wheat they grind perfectly without plugging up the grinding stones.
You can also grind cloves the same way, if, for instance, you are making a sweet spiced loaf. We also use our grinder to grind pepper cornes. Man is freshly ground pepper a different beast than pre-ground pepper.
We also grow our own grinding corn (sweet corn is not nice). It doesn't make a good flour), but here there is a trick too. The grains are too large to pass the wee dowel at the bottom of the funnel so if you simply put a finger down there and wiggle it while the corn is grinding, it works fine.
Another little trick, sometimes when you shut down the flour mill, when you start it up again, it stalls. You hear the motor humming but not turning. Close the mill really quick like. Then move the fineness selector to course, start the machine and pull the lever back to the fineness you want.
In a really serious jam up, you have to tip out the grain from the hopper, remove the top, and clean out the stones manually. I've only had to do this once.
We usually use the bread maker to make the dough and then either finish it in the bread machine or in the oven, depending on what we are wanting to produce.
Apparently threshed and winnowed wheat berries (grain) will last for decades if kept, even at room temperature, as long as they are kept dry. I remember something I read many years ago. Somewhere, I can't remember where, there are some people that make grain storage bins from ferro-cement, buried in the ground with the removed soil making a berm around the entrance. The bins are conical in shape getting wider toward the bottom. They look like the early re-entery vehicles from the space program.
Grain is alive. It uses Oxygen and produces Carbon dioxide. Apparently when the grain is stored this way, any insects, mice and anything that needs oxygen to survive dies. The grain is preserved this way for very long periods.
Some "modern" folks apparently use a plastic liner for the grain. Critical is to have the grain below 7% moisture for long preservation. Lower still is better.
In contrast, when grain is ground, it's shelf life is very short unless refrigerated and even then should be used in a week or so. This is why the flour you buy at the store, even the brown flour, doesn't hold a patch on real whole meal flour for nutrition. When you used to take your wheat for grinding to the mill, bread really was the staff of life. However, in order to turn flour into a marketable commodity that would last, the germ had to be removed.
This is the little wheat plant that is tucked into the grain and while it is about 20% of the weight of the wheat berry, it contains some 80% of the nutrients. Using roller mills it was possible to sieve out the germ and make a flour that would last for a very long time and could be shipped long distances. However, as with so much of our food, we lost a huge amount by having this convenience.
By the way, if you want to see the germ (the little plant in a seed), it is most easily seen in a bean seed. A bean is a dicot which means that the endosperm is stored in two halves and they can be split to expose the germ. Soak a bean seed in water over night. In the morning, carefully remove the outer coat and split the two halves apart. You will see the little plant in between. You can even leave the bean in water that only partially covers it and let it sprout. The little plant grows and can be more easily seen as can the cotyledons. It is harder to do this with wheat but the principle is the same.
Back home.
I have my grinder but before I get into it's use, I must tell you some more I have discovered about our wheat supply. It is not pretty.
I have checked with a number of farmers and a grain merchant and the story remained the same with all of them. Apparently when grain is augured into the silos, a little Pirimiphosmethyl is added against insect pests. This can be added by the farmer, especially if he is going to store his wheat in his own silos for any length of time, and by the grain merchant and by the miller or all three. If you look up the rap sheet on this chemical, you find a recommendation that if you have any other choice of pesticide, use it. This stuff is nasty. Besides being highly poisonous (you guessed it) it is a carcinogen. It gets worse.
If the weeds have got away from the farmer toward harvest time and even earlier if the farmer is using 'roundup ready' wheat. he will roundup his field. Apparently the weeds will plug up his combine so he lets the roundup do its work and then harvests. Also killing the plant makes the grain ripen all at the same time.
So, not only do we have a known carcinogen pesticide in our wheat but a known carcinogenic herbicide. Roundup has not been proven to be a carcinogen to humans. After all, you can't feed Roundup to a hundred humans and not to a control group. No ethics committee would agree to such an experiment. But it has been proven to be carcinogenic to animals. I rest my case.
What is particularly annoying is that the use of the pesticide is so unnecessary. Enlightened farmers (and there are precious few of these) use Carbon dioxide. They have a connection at the bottom of their silo where they can attach a hose from a Carbon dioxide cylinder and fill the silo with this completely harmless gas. Problem solved. Any insect or their eggs that have come in with the grain dies.
Update March 2020
We now have two sources of organic wheat grown and stored without the use of either Roundup or Actilic (Pirimiphos methyl). We have waffle morning every Sunday with friends and Pitza Thursday, using the new Pizza oven I finished 6 months ago. In addition, we bake bread two or three times a week. The grinder which is a German model (Hawos) has worked flawlessly and it takes about two to three minutes to grind 500 grams of wheat.
You can't grind oily seeds such as pumpkin seeds but there is a trick. If you combine, say, 10% of these oily seeds with the wheat they grind perfectly without plugging up the grinding stones.
You can also grind cloves the same way, if, for instance, you are making a sweet spiced loaf. We also use our grinder to grind pepper cornes. Man is freshly ground pepper a different beast than pre-ground pepper.
We also grow our own grinding corn (sweet corn is not nice). It doesn't make a good flour), but here there is a trick too. The grains are too large to pass the wee dowel at the bottom of the funnel so if you simply put a finger down there and wiggle it while the corn is grinding, it works fine.
Another little trick, sometimes when you shut down the flour mill, when you start it up again, it stalls. You hear the motor humming but not turning. Close the mill really quick like. Then move the fineness selector to course, start the machine and pull the lever back to the fineness you want.
In a really serious jam up, you have to tip out the grain from the hopper, remove the top, and clean out the stones manually. I've only had to do this once.
We usually use the bread maker to make the dough and then either finish it in the bread machine or in the oven, depending on what we are wanting to produce.
