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Many readers have emailed me over recent weeks with questions regarding the grain grinding routine in my kitchen. Â I realized that I needed to take a step back and show you the basics of selecting a grain grinder and other tasks related to making fresh flour to help you determine a routine that works best for you.
Remember that starting to grind fresh grain in your home should only be started after you have started cooking with the right fats!   Getting the fats right is the most important change you can make in your kitchen.
Using fresh flour is a wonderful addition to your cooking repertoire as even the organic flours from the healthfood store or the ones shipped to your door are nutritionless and not worth the money. Â Â Once you grind flour, the nutrition is gone in about 3 days in an unrefrigerated situation. Freezing your flour right after grinding will preserve this nutrition for weeks, which is why you really need to do it yourself. Â As you can see from the video, flour can be used immediately right out of the freezer, so there is no disadvantage to freezing it.
Grain Requires Proper Preparation after Grinding
Delving into Traditional Eating for the first time inevitably uncovers the fact that modern methods for preparing grains and legumes can be extremely damaging to health over the long term particularly if numerous servings of these foods are consumed on a daily basis as recommended by conventional dieticians and nutritionists.
Even if you take the time and care to make your own bread at home with freshly ground grain, if you do not follow the centuries old traditions for eliminating anti-nutrients and maximizing the nutrition in the grain prior to baking, you could in fact be doing yourself and your family more harm than good. Â These methods are sour leavening, soaking, and/or sprouting.
But first, you must grind the grain! Below is the video how-to.
Grain Grinding Basics
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Hi Sarah,
First I want to thank you for all that you do. I am in my early 20s and did not know a thing about traditional preparation of grains until I came across your videos. I have been soaking oats and flour however only the stuff from the grocery store. I am really interested in grinding my own flour but am having trouble finding a place to buy the grain. Because I do not live close to a Bread Beckers location, it would be around $75 to have it shipped (which is more than I can stomach) and after much searching I have been unable to find another distributor close by.
I know you may not have much info but I thought I would ask just in case!
Thank you again!
Forgot to mention I live in Milwaukee, WI 🙂
Hi Molly, I find have breadbeckers near me either, but maybe you’ll be blessed with this co-op or you can become a drop site is you don’t have one. Hope this helps.
Have you ever had weevils or other bugs in your wheat after long storage of 18 months?
Would you need to put it in the freezer for 48 hours before you put it in storage and ground it as needed?
What about those Einkorn wheat berries I’ve read about. Are they supposed to be low gluten and better for you than the hybrid wheats on the market?
Does it make any difference whether the grain is medium ground or fine ground? Are those lids you talked about available at the same place you buy your wheat? I used to buy whole wheat flour from a nurse about 50 miles from my home, but I lost her contact information and would like to start buying my own wheat and grinding it myself.
My late stepfather ran a grist mill that was over 100 hundred years old and it was water ground mill with the stones and he always ground his corn meal very fine and it made the best hoecake and pone bread I’ve ever eaten. He dressed the stones every so often to ensure they were working right and when he passed away in 1985, the meal has never been the same. He had gave up his lease on this mill and worked there until 1985, The state of Ga. moved it to the Ga. Agrirama, an old village from the 1800’s in Tifton, Ga and the mill is still there and running, but nobody knows how to grind the mill like he did.
It sometimes only takes one generation to lose the old ways and skills that existed for centuries.
P.S. do you have to soak sprouted grains that are ground into flour?
Hi Sarah,
I love your videos. Thank you so much for posting these. I recently started to attempt a more Traditional Diet for my family of 7, but it is hard to find the time and I’m overwhelmed. Question: is it better/healthier to buy sprouted grains to grind into flour (found a company from your resource page) or to buy the organic grains you mention here from bread beckers? Thank you, Tierney
Hi, I found a champion w/ grinder attachment on Craigslist for $125.I’ve been consindering a grain grinder for a long time, so I’m thinking this is the one.I was doing some research on it, & found this on . Not Recommended for:
Nut Meats, Dried Beans (other than what is recommended above), Garbanzo Beans (chick peas), dried herbs, sesame seeds, popcorn, amaranth, lima beans, soft wheat berries or other types of seeds with soft centers. Running any material containing soft centers will gum up the grinding blades and cause the unit to overheat.
I’m assuming you haven’t had any problems w/ soft wheat berries since that’s what you use all the time, but I didn’t know if there’s a cleaning technique you use???
Thanks so much & for all your information on healthy living!:)
Hi Sarah:
I am wondering if the following is possible for storing sprouted grains: to increase the shelf life of my dehydrated items I place them in a glass jar, put in a canning lid and remove the air with a FoodSaver attachment. I don’t do this with raw seeds, wheat and other raw grains because I know that the lack of oxygen will kill them. But once the grain is sprouted and dehydrated, is it still fragile? I have no information on this so I thought I would ask you. Also, do you grind your sprouted wheat right away and then freeze it? Is that necessary? I am wondering if it is possible to do a large batch and then store it in jars with the air removed. I would love to know you thoughts on this.
Can you make handmade pasta from flour that has been ground from sprouted wheat? I don’t think I can completely live without pasta.
Thanks Sarah! 🙂