I am sure it is active I was just wondering if you should be feeding it [a starter] with the stuff you want it to work on? You know like a baby does great on baby food but bogs down if the next meal is tough meat, boiled potatoes and raw veggies.KnittyGritty said:
Grinding your own flour
- Thread starter KnittyGritty
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so lucky
Almost Self-Reliant
Regarding adding the bran back into flour, I just read on the blog "Nourished Kitchen" that it is the bran part of the wheat that has all the phytic acid in it. Phytic acids are reportedly why grain is hard to digest. So even eating fermented whole wheat you are still getting some phytic acid, just not as much. :/
Interesting... Reminds me of some of my yippie-hippie food-fetish reading.so lucky said:
I always understood bran to be the fiber part of the grain, which is good, right? When fiber is consumed in it's natural form, it has some positive on heart health. Don't know the details but I recall something about cholesterol management. Michael Pollan mentioned [1] that the effects of fiber are reduced if you separate out the fiber and take it separately. I can't site any proper sources, but that's my understanding. Also, I am anxious about singling out any one ingredient or molecule. Deciding what the good and bad ingredients are hasn't worked in the past. Example: the low-fat diet craze of past several decades. There are certainly are specific molecules that are bad for you (such as trans forms of fatty acids) but the problem usually isn't as simple as ingesting more or less of it. Health results from a balanced diet and adequate physical activity. Taking fish oil or avoiding phytic acid probably won't do the trick.
As long as I'm on the soap box, I'll also point out that the study of food is a new field and little is known. There are researchers out there doing good work. However, most of what I've found on the interwebs uses non-technical language to make unsubstantiated and untestable claims. For example, what foods are hard to digest? How do you know if it's hard to digest? I'm not picking on anyone in particular, but such inexact language is an indication that the results are, at best, an anecdote.
OK, enough preaching. I guess we share anecdotes with each other all the time on this forum...
1. Interview on The Splendid Table, some years ago
nmred
Enjoys Recycling
As has been stated, this is true whole wheat flour. I don't think you can sift out the bran and germ at home (why would you want to
). It requires special equipment.It's hogwash! I always use my flour as fresh as possible, often grinding just before baking. Why? A kernal of grain is a living thing. Once you break it open by grinding, it immediately begins to lose nutrients, similar to the way garden produce begins losing nutrients as soon as you pick it. For the optimum nutritional benefit, it should be used before 72 hours. I have always had better results by using fresh flour.
This has never been my experience. In fact, the opposite has been my experience, and I have been doing this for 21 years. But, as stated before, everyone has different results, so try it if you want.
Grinding your own flour, and using it fresh, is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your family. It truly is healthy eating! Congratulations on your plan to purchase one. I highly recommend the Golden Grain Grinder http://goldengraingrinders.com/. It is more expensive than some of the others, but is better built and comes with a 5 year warranty! Nothing else touches that. It is my 4th grain mill. I burnt up the other 3 after just a couple of years.
I purchased the extended 10 year warranty, and hope this one lasts at least that long. I have had it a year, and so far am pleased with it.me&thegals
A Major Squash & Pumpkin Lover
The fresher the better. And refrigerate or freeze after grinding since there will be fat (germ) in your wheat which will go rancid.KnittyGritty said:
In theory, the gluten-type action of the dough will be better if you age the flour. Traditionally, flour was always aged. Bleached flour has been aged chemically so that it's less inconvenient for the miller. Aged flour has various problems---bugs, for example---but the culinary benefits are sometimes worth the trouble. For me, I prefer a denser loaf with a good crust----the sort of bread that defeats even firm butter.
In practice, I almost always use fresh-ground flour. It's hard enough to get it ground without the trouble of aging it.
You can sift out the bran and germ, if you want. It's a lot of effort, though. First, dampen the berries to make the bran somewhat resistant to tearing. Then, coarsely grind the flour. Now, get out some bolting cloth (think high-quality fine-pitch hardware cloth) and sift it so that the finest particles are removed. This is White Flour. If you did everything right, there are huge flakes of bran that are easy to filter out. The germ should also separate but I've not ever been able to do it in my kitchen. Now you have some medium-sized chunks of wheat. Grind those again. This procedure will give you so-so white flour.
Another idea is to make Grahm flour. The bran and germ get in the way of milling a very fine flour so Grahm removed those parts first, ground a very fine white flour, then ground the bran and germ separately and re-combined it all at the end.
It's easier to learn to like whole-meal bread than to make white flour!
In practice, I almost always use fresh-ground flour. It's hard enough to get it ground without the trouble of aging it.
You can sift out the bran and germ, if you want. It's a lot of effort, though. First, dampen the berries to make the bran somewhat resistant to tearing. Then, coarsely grind the flour. Now, get out some bolting cloth (think high-quality fine-pitch hardware cloth) and sift it so that the finest particles are removed. This is White Flour. If you did everything right, there are huge flakes of bran that are easy to filter out. The germ should also separate but I've not ever been able to do it in my kitchen. Now you have some medium-sized chunks of wheat. Grind those again. This procedure will give you so-so white flour.
Another idea is to make Grahm flour. The bran and germ get in the way of milling a very fine flour so Grahm removed those parts first, ground a very fine white flour, then ground the bran and germ separately and re-combined it all at the end.
It's easier to learn to like whole-meal bread than to make white flour!
