How to Make Your Own Flour
Here at J&R Pierce Family Farm, I think it’s important to connect my readers with valuable insight from other experts. Today’s post is a guest post brought to you by Chelsey Thompson.
Many times, when you need some flour for a baking project, you will go to the store and pick out the kind you need. There are sometimes a few good choices, but if you want some that are unique, or you have a few dietary restrictions you need to stick with, finding a good type of flour can be a challenge.
The good news is that making flour is a simple process, one that has been done for many years. And it is still possible to make your own flour at home, without a lot of time and hassle along the way. In fact, you can make it yourself in seconds without having to lose the vitamins and minerals that many processed types of flour struggle with.
Let’s take a look at some of the steps you need to take to learn how to make your own flour.
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What Do I Need to Make My Own Flour?
To make your own flour at home, you will need:
A coffee grinder or food mill
Whole grain
That’s it! Easy, right? In this post, I’ll walk you through all the steps to make your own flour. If you are more of a visual learner, be sure to check out this video:
How to Make Your Own Flour: Step by Step
Stocking the Kitchen
The first thing we need to focus on is how to stock the kitchen. You need to have the right ingredients at hand to help make your flour. Sometimes the ingredients will vary based on the specific type of flour you want to make.
1.Obtain the Ingredients
You can use pretty much any seed, nut, or grain that you want. Sometimes it is fun to be exotic and try out something like acorns, popcorn, or quinoa, though traditional options like barley, oats, and wheat are fine too. You can find a lot of these options at health food stores as well as online.
Before you go shopping though, have a good idea of the flour you would like to make. This will determine the exact ingredients you should purchase. If you want rye flour, getting rye berries is a good start. If you want to make whole wheat flour to add something healthy into your diet, then whole wheat berries are a good place to start.
2. Consider the Uses for Your Wheat Flour
If you are looking into wheat flour, then you need to know what you plan to use it for. Each kind is going to work better for different needs. For example, options like einkorn, emmer, and spelt are best for healthy versions of bread.
For any type of yeast bread, hard red wheat will be the best. If you are making something like muffins or pancakes that do not need yeast, then soft white is a good option here.
3. Choose How You Plan to Grind
If you want to spend hours using your arms to handle all of the grinding, that is an option (though not a very good one). But most of the time it is much faster and more convenient to use something like a coffee grinder, food processor, or a blender to do all of the work. The higher the power in the electric device, the finer the flour can turn out in the end.
There is one advantage to a manual mill and that is it will not cause any heat that will damage the nutrients in the seed. If you want all the good nutrients and do not mind the extra time it takes to work on these, then go ahead and work on this method.
Electric mills are more expensive as well, costing a few hundred dollars to get started with.
Most of the time using a blender, coffee grinder, or food processor is the best option because of the speed. It may not provide as fine, or small, of a flour as some other options, but it does the job and will work just fine for most people, particularly those who are new to grinding flour.
Grinding Up the Ingredients
Now that your kitchen is all set up and ready to go, it is time to grind up the ingredients. To get started, use the following steps:
Add Everything to the Blender or Mill
This is the step where you will add all of your ingredients to the blender or whichever grinding tool you’ve decided to use. Make up enough for the amount you want to use right now. Keep in mind that fresh flour has the potential to go bad quickly. You do not want to fill up your grinder more than halfway so you have enough room.
For most options, the flour will expand as you do the grinding. So a cup of wheat berries, nuts and beans, if you use a cup of them, you should end up with about a cup and a half of the flour when you are done. Make sure there is enough room in the mixer to handle the extra that will be produced as you go.
Grind Away
If you plan to do this through a mill, you need to turn the crank until the grain is processed all the way through. If you want to use a blender, you need to pick the highest setting on it and blend for 30 seconds. After this time, turn the blender off, take the lid off, and stir it all around. Place the lid back onto the blender and blend a little bit more.
Continue to work with mixing until you get the flour into the texture that you like. You can check on it every few seconds by sifting the mixture into a bowl and looking closely at it. Touch to make sure how the consistency is doing. If it doesn’t meet what you want, you can run it back through again.
Using and Storing The Flour
Now it is time to move on to storing and then using the flour you have.
A container with a lid or a resealable bag is the best option. You may need to use a big container if you have a lot of flour, but you do need something to keep it fresh so you can still use it when you are ready.
Store the flour in a cool and dark place. This will keep it away from sunlight and bugs, which can both do a lot of damage to your flour. If you want, a bay leaf in the flour will not harm it, but can keep some bugs out of it.
Consider Using the Fridge
If you want to do all the work at once, or you have a big baking project coming up, then you may need to consider making the flour in bulk quantities. When this happens, it is better to keep the flour in the fridge or even the freezer. Whole wheat flour will only last a few months if you keep it in the cabinet. If you think it will take longer than that to use it up, then place it somewhere cold.
Freezing the flour is easy to do. You just need to put it in the same kind of resealable container that we talked about earlier and throw it all in. You can keep the flour in the freezer for years without any problems. Just remember that you should use it occasionally and do not forget it back there!
Experiment With Using Your Flour
Some people find that homemade flour comes with a different type of taste than expected and it may perform differently when you cook it. The main reason for this is that homemade flour is often super fresh compared to the stuff you can purchase at the store, especially if you just finished making it. This is why you need to experiment with it first.
Fresh flour is going to give the yeast more to feed on, giving you more fermentation activity than normal. This will change up some of the taste to your recipes, even if you use recipes that you are familiar with. It shouldn’t taste bad, just remember the taste is going to be a little different. Do a few practice runs with the flour to see how you like it.
Once you are used to the taste and texture that you get out of your baked goods, it is time to get to baking with your flour. This flour can work with any of the types of baked goods that you have planned, giving you a lot of yummy stuff to keep around the home to keep your cupboards full and happy.
Tips for Baking with Homemade Flour
Your homemade flour is ready to go. You worked hard and now have a bunch of flour stored up in your cupboards or the fridge and you are ready to bake. Before you jump in and start baking with this flour, there are a few important tips you should consider. Some of the tips you can follow to make sure your baking is successful with your homemade flour includes:
Choose the Right Kind of Ingredients
There are many types of ingredients that you can add into your flours. You can choose ingredients like grains, nuts, berries, and more. Each one will lend itself best to a different taste and type of baking that you want to use.
If you are looking for a specific taste out of the breads and baked goods you create, then you will need to choose the right ingredients from the beginning. Research what will taste best in your baked goods and work from there.
Weigh Everything
Before you use the flour, you need to weigh everything out. The weight of your homemade flour could be heavier or lighter than traditional flour so do not assume that a cup of store bought flour is the same as your homemade flour.
You can use a baking scale to help figure out how much of the flour you need and work from there. You should also consider weighing out all of the ingredients you plan to use as well.
Try Different Types of Flour in Your Recipes
Since you are making your own flour, you may need to be brave and try out a few different options to see what will work and what will not for you in the kitchen. If you can, purchase a few different types of base ingredients and then add them into your baking. Then do a taste test to see which tastes the best and works for you. You may find that an unusual combination is the right one for you.
Making Your Own Flour
Many times it seems easier and less expensive to purchase the flour we want from the store.
But when you want a specific type of flour, you may find that your options are limited. Or if you want something that is fresh for all of your baked goods, having control over the flour you use and how it is made can make a big difference.
Plus, it’s always fun to be more self-sufficient!
The good news is that it is easy to make your own flour. You just need to choose what you would like to turn into flour, have the right blender or grinding tool, and then get to work. When you are done, either use the flour right away or store it in an airtight container to make sure the flour stays nice and fresh until you are ready to use it. That’s all there is to it!
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