Grinding Wheat

We all know it is better to store food in their whole grain state vs flour or any other milled form.  This is because whole grains have a longer shelf life than those of their milled counter parts.  So in an effort to figure out how much whole grain wheat I needed to eventually grind into flour I set up a little experiment. 

I wanted to know:

• Does Hard Red Wheat and Hard White Wheat grind into the same amounts of flour
• How much flour does 10 cups of whole grain wheat equate to
• How long does it take to grind 10 cups of whole grain wheat into flour

I used a Nutrimill (available in stores only at this time) to grind my flour and I set the coarseness to the finest flour setting. I HIGHLY recommend reading your mill's instruction booklet before starting your own experiment.  That way you don't have to start and stop your process to make sure you are doing it right.  I stopped the grinding process a few different times during grinding to make sure that the flour bowl (the thing that catches all the flour from the mill) was not getting overly full.  Check your mill instruction book to see what the bowl capacity is because you don't want it to get too full and back up your mill.  Also the particular mill that I used did have a noise reducer but this is still a loud project--not exactly one you want to do while your baby is sleeping in the next room.. 

I measured 10 cups of Hard Red Wheat, it took 15 minutes to grind and it produced about 16 1/2 cups of flour.

For 10 cups of Hard White Wheat, it took about 18 minutes to grind and it produced about 17 1/2 cups of flour.

I was surprised with the different amounts of flour.  I did check the flour catching bowl a few more times with the Hard White Wheat compared to the Hard Red Wheat so that could explain the time difference.

Some people say that the Hard White Wheat has a more mild flavor than the Hard Red Wheat.  It is difficult to tell in the picture above but the Hard Red Wheat Flour is definitely darker than the Hard White Wheat Flour. 

There is nothing better than super fresh whole wheat flour!  I am amazed how much better my bread tastes and I swear it raises faster too.  I've been using this fresh whole wheat flour in 6-Grain Waffles (seriously its ridiculous how many of these I am eating!), Whole Wheat French Bread, and coming soon will be another bread recipe comparing the different flours!  Grinding the wheat was easy enough and the results are worth doing a batch or so a month to ensure that I always am using fresh flour. 

What recipes are you using whole wheat flour for?

Happy Eating!