Grind Your Own Flours From Whole Grains

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Odin, at age 3, grinding the flour for his own cookies

With this simple hand mill, we grind our own flour. It gives you a bit of exercise, some great tasting flour, and saves a load of money.  We buy whole grains in bulk: Organic wheat costs about 20 cents a pound, when you buy it in 40 lb sacks (edit: wheat prices have gone up considerably in the years since I first published this article, but I'm sure the savings for grinding your own is still considerable). I don't even know what organic whole wheat flour goes for, but I know it's a lot more than that, and it's not even fresh.

Fresh ground flour is better for more than just flavor; it also has a higher protein count if used within 24 hours of grinding, and the oils in grains are notorious for going rancid after being ground up as well. Many people keep their whole grain flour in the fridge to reduce rancidity, but very few grocery stores do that, leaving you with little choice but to buy rancid flour unless your are grinding your own.

Buying whole grains gives you more control over the source of your food, and keeps those grains from ever needing to be processed by a factory. You could, for example, buy grains directly from a local farmer and skip the grocery store middle man altogether! Read here about how we stopped going to the grocery store. We order our whole grains from Azure Standard, an Oregon based company that distributes natural foods to grocery stores, and to any groups that meet the minimum purchase of $550. 

With our home mills we can make our own flours from millet, spelt, rye, oats, rice, corn, and teff grains, as well as many types of wheat.

There are tons of electric flour mills out there as well, which are much easier and faster than our manual one. We generally like hand-powered things though; our mill is relatively quiet, simple, will last forever, and will work when there's no electricity. 

I did recently discover, however, that my high-speed blender can make flour so fast! It's turned me back on to baking. I have always loved baking, but don't necessarily feel like sitting down at the grinder for 30 minutes before I can make anything. The blender is great, quick and easy, although it does not grind the flour so fine or give you as much control over the grind. Our hand crank mill is Back to Basics brand, and our blender is a Blendtec. While I have made oat flour in a standard blender, I think a high-powered blender is required if you want to make flour from anything harder than oats.

These can all be made into delicious and healthy flour combinations. From right: Oats, rye, rice, corn, wheat, millet

Some things you could make with your fresh ground flour include: your own sourdough starter; a delicious soaked grains breakfast cake; or, if you have a cat, you can even make your own natural, non-toxic kitty litter.

Below is an ad link for the high speed, super powerful blender that I use to grind my flours, as well as a link to the other leading brand, Vitamix, for comparison. I love it and I bet you will too. Every purchase through my ad link provides a little income for our family. Thanks in advance!

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Grind Your Own Flours From Whole Grains

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Oleh Mellow

Mellow January 15, 2012 41 Comment