Why fresh milled?
Why would anyone in todays day and age want to mill their own wheat? The grocery store has an entire isle dedicated to bread products. It’s so easy to walk into a grocery store and buy any flavor of bread you can imagine. In this fast paced world we live in why would we make time to not only bake our own bread but to mill the wheat?
I’d like to share with you my reasons for making this giant switch for my family, as well as what led me to researching fresh milled wheat in the first place.
Similar to a lot of Americans today I was trying to lose weight and stay healthy. Modern advice says to stay away from carbs, and bread in particular. Bread is the enemy and will prevent weight loss as well as cause a multitude of health problems. Cutting out bread can only lead to health. So I cut out bread, pasta, tortillas, anything with wheat. In fact I went completely gluten free because losing weight isn’t easy for me and I wanted to be fully committed to getting and staying healthy.
Then a little over a year ago my husband and I committed to reading the Bible all the way through. We have a One Year Bible that lays out a daily reading and if you follow it you will have read the bible completely through in one year.
This was my first time ever reading the whole book. I’ve come to cherish that time I spend with my husband and my Lord each evening. One of the things that jumped out at me during our readings is the amount of time the bible mentions bread. Everything from the mana sent from heaven, to the sin offerings and wave offerings in Leviticus, and even Jesus references himself as the bread of life. How is bread such an evil food if the Bible talks about it so much?
I was always told that the difference is modern day wheat has been altered and it’s not even close to the wheat they ate in Jesus’ day. Or modern wheat is so terrible because it’s been sifted and all the nutrients were removed to help increase shelf storage. Sifted and bleached wheat is bad for you. These explanations sounded good, very reasonable excuses to give up wheat. So why wasn’t I feeling settled on the subject?
Before my oldest son got his drivers license I used to drive him to work every day. Those few quiet moments coming back home each day I would listen to podcasts. I stumbled upon Sue Becker with “The Bread Beckers.” All I can say is her podcast changed my life. She is a scientist, a nutritionist, a fellow Christian who was able to answer all of my questions. I listened to her message over and over again, absorbing all I could from her. I began doing my own research and listening to other youtubers on the subject and it all began to make so much sense!
Once I had done my own research and made up my mind on what I believed, I brought all that I had learned to Justin. He had also given up wheat which was very hard for him, bread is his favorite food. I did my best to share my knowledge with him. I think in the end all he heard was “You can eat bread again” and he was 100% on board.
I started with a hand mill and a small bag of wheat berries from amazon. I allowed my teenagers to mill my wheat with that little hand crank, and I went to work baking my first loaf of bread. It was heavy, gritty, it didn’t rise well. It was a mess. I refused to allow that to get me discouraged. We ate my failure and I tried again. Through different youtube videos and blogs I slowly learned how to bake bread with fresh milled flour.
Once I had done this for a little bit and knew it was something I was planning to stick with we upgraded to a Whisper mill by wonder mill.
This new piece of equipment was life changing. The flour came out significantly finer and was much more palatable. It was easier to work with and the end result was better. My bread rose better and was far less gritty. I have friends who have purchased the kitchen aid mill attachments as well and ended up upgrading to the whisper mill. Having the right equipment just makes all the difference. The only other mill I’ve ever used was the Nutrimill and it did an equally fantastic job on milling wheat berries into a fine flour.
Many years ago my mom gave me her kitchen aid mixer. I was using the kitchen aid mixer with the dough hook to knead my dough. It was taking over 30 minutes to knead the dough and I wasn’t getting the dough to window pane. (more on that coming up.) My kitchen aid motor was getting extremely hot and I knew that couldn’t be good for it. I continued to practice my bread making skills and my family continued to eat my creations no matter how good (or bad) they came out. I was watching a lot of youtube videos and learning a lot. Trial and error, failure and perseverance. The learning curve was steep. Fresh milled baking was a whole new monster, it was nothing like baking with commercial flour.
We saved up and bought a used Bosch Universal Mixer. This was my biggest game changer of all. I could double my bread recipe to make 4 pounds of dough at a time. I could probably do more but I worry about the wear and tear on my bosch.
It could successfully knead my bread to window pane in less than 10 minutes. I can easily make multiple batches of bread in a day with my new bosch. Kneading to window pane means you can gently stretch the dough thin enough to see light through it without it tearing. The windowpane test lets you see just how strong and elastic your dough is at any point. Try it when you’ve first started kneading, and the dough will break almost as soon as you start stretching it. But after sufficient kneading, you’ll be able to stretch it much more thinly. My kitchen aid could never knead my dough to this point. The Bosch does it in about 7 minutes. I’m not saying that the kitchen aid mixer cannot successfully knead fresh milled dough. My machine is not a professional grade model and has a smaller motor. It’s possible that other stand up mixers can knead bread sufficiently. It just didn’t work for me. I use my stand up mixer for lots of other things, just not bread.
I was loving my new tools, and the new skills I was learning. I was making cinnamon rolls and pizza and sandwich bread. I was talking to everyone about my new skill and what I had learned. Why was I so passionate about bread? That’s probably a little odd but I don’t regret it. To my surprise it started to spread! Other woman wanted to learn how to make healthy bread. I’ve shared the above Bread of Idleness video with so many and I’ve given baking classes to woman truly interested in learning this. There is now a small group of us that get together to bake together, we share our new creations, we encourage each other and slowly, we’ve all pretty much ended up with the same equipment so all of our loaves come out pretty consistent with each others. It’s nice to have someone to help pick up a grain order if one of us can’t make it because we all order through the same company and use the same pick up point. I’ve built a community based around bread. These are my people and I love them all dearly.
I continue to learn as I go. It’s almost a year now since we’ve given up bread from the grocery store. My children love eating what I bake and we are all healthier than ever. It took me some time to find my rhythm, to be able to make bread without it taking hours out of my day or to feel overwhelming. I was not a natural at bread making. I failed a lot and I just kept baking. It’s finally gotten easy. My loaves still don’t always come out perfectly but they always come out delicious.
If I’m making just regular old sandwich bread we’ve discovered we prefer the pullman pan. The crust comes out soft, it rises evenly and it’s the perfect shape and size for sandwiches. I own two of the two pound loaf sizes. This makes amazing sandwich bread,
For cinnamon swirl bread, or pizza stuffed bread, I use a traditional one pound bread loaf pan. I find the bread cooks better in smaller batches if I have them stuffed with goodies.
There is a science to which wheat berries you use. Some of it is a matter of preference but for the sake of simplicity you have to use hard wheat for bread, and you’ll use soft wheat for things that don’t require yeast like muffins, pancakes, waffles and tortillas. Through trial and error we learned that we prefer hard red wheat berries for our sandwich bread. It just has more flavor than hard white. We use hard white for things like pizza dough or cinnamon rolls where you don’t want the flavor of the wheat to steal the show. For sandwich bread hard red wins out for us every time. Some of my friends like half hard red and half hard white. Feel free to experiment for yourself. It’s all delicious and will boil down to personal preference.
I use soft white for pancakes and muffins. I have purchased kamut (pronounced ka-moo), spelt and einkorn and have experimented with all of it. Einkorn is my absolute favorite but it’s also the most expensive wheat berry so I don’t bake it very often. Kamut is said to make amazing pasta. I haven’t tried making pasta yet but it’s definitely on the list. I can’t wait to try it. I also have durum wheat berries which is the wheat traditionally used to make the noodles you buy in the store.
Hard and soft wheat are considered modern varieties of wheat. Spelt, kamut and einkorn are ancient grains. These are the grains that were probably eaten during Jesus’ time. There are still plenty of other types of wheat out there but this will give you a good starting point. Start small, try some things, and then keep trying. You’ll quickly find exactly what works for you and it’s so fun trying all the new things.
One last thing. People are often curious where I buy my wheat berries. For now I order through Azure Standard. The grain is organic and non gmo. I can order in bulk but you don’t have to, they sell smaller quantities of items as well. You get your order once a month, it comes in on a semi truck at your drop point. You literally get your grain and other items you ordered straight off the truck. My family of 12 goes through approximately fifty pounds of wheat berries a month. I also order my avocado oil, my honey and lots of other pantry staples through Azure. I’ve never been disappointed with my azure order.
If you’re thinking of ordering through Azure, if you use this link I get a little kick back from Azure. It doesn’t cost you a thing but it’ll help provide more grain for me to keep experimenting and feeding my family well. I appreciate your support and I’m here to answer any of your questions. I’ll be posting videos along the way of new things we’ve tried, as well as instructional videos with tips on how I finally got successful in baking amazing fresh milled loaves every time.
https://www.azurestandard.com/?a_aid=a71905b058 or go to azurestandard.com/start and enter SonnaJohnson1 as the referral code.
Join my facebook page Abundance Rising Family and my YouTube channel with the same name. Subscribe to stay up to date on the latest videos and posts. I’m excited to be on this journey with you and I’m happy to answer all of your questions. Lets bake together!