Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy 5 Days with Whole Wheat Flour: Getting the Most Out of Your Wheat |  |
- 5 Days with Whole Wheat Flour: Getting the Most Out of Your Wheat
- Healthy 2Day Wednesday {Week 55}
- 5 Days with Whole Wheat Flour: Why Whole Wheat?
| 5 Days with Whole Wheat Flour: Getting the Most Out of Your Wheat Posted: 06 Jun 2012 04:00 AM PDT
Welcome back to 5 Days with Whole Wheat Flour! So far we’ve discussed the different types of wheat available, and why you should choose whole wheat (for the most part) over white flour. Today, we’re going to discuss the benefits of grinding your own wheat. Say what? Yes, grinding your own wheat. No, not by hand. (Heavens, that would take forever!) Not even with a stone. These days, you can purchase appliances that will speedily grind your wheat (and any other grain or seed) for you so that you can have the freshest possible flour in a minute or less. Why? Why would you want to invest in such a tool? I know that I don’t part with my (husband’s) hard-earned money easily, and I suspect you don’t either. Allow me to convince you of the necessity of such a tool, and encourage you to save up for one if you don’t have ready money for it. The reason why whole wheat should be freshly ground if at all possible is the same reason why we avoid certain oils: rancidity. Polyunsaturated fats easily turn rancid simply by exposure to heat, light, or air, making them very unstable. Oils made from these fats are full of free radicals, which become the source of a large number of diseases in the body. The oil in wheat comes from the germ. Here’s the picture from yesterday so you can see what it looks like:
Storebought whole wheat flour might not contain all the oils and the germ in its entirety, but even so, it does go rancid much more quickly than white flour. This is a good thing. Living food will go bad much more quickly than dead or dying food. The trick is to consume it before it turns rancid so that you can get the benefit of all its nutrients without the risk of free radicals. In the case of certain oils (most vegetable oils), this is nigh unto impossible, which is why many experts recommend avoiding such oils. (The Good Fat Cookbook by Fran McCullough explains this in great detail.) But thankfully, with whole wheat, there is a way to easily acquire fresh whole wheat flour without worrying about rancidity and free radicals. The answer is to grind it yourself. When you grind your own whole wheat, you can be sure it is as fresh as possible. The bran (the outer covering of the wheatberry) protects the inside contents of the grain so that it can stay fresh for years. It’s only when the bran is crushed (or milled) that the germ is exposed to light and air and begins to rancidize. If you’re still not convinced, consider the “rat study” mentioned by Katie of Kitchen Stewardship (who, as I mentioned yesterday, has extensively studied this topic of wheat, and has a lot of great information on her blog) in her post about the nutrition of freshly ground wheat. In the study, rats were fed a variety of types of wheat; some freshly ground, some 15-day old ground flour, and some store-bought white flour. Within 4 generations, the rats fed the old flour and the white flour had become completely infertile. Four generations of rats is the equivalent of 100 human years… Americans have been eating white flour for about 130 years, and what has become a widespread problem? Infertility. I think it is no coincidence! So whether you sprout it or soak it or not, clearly the healthiest wheat is the freshest wheat. Many experts suggest that freshly ground whole wheat can be refrigerated or frozen and used within 2-4 months. I say better safe than sorry. Grinding wheat in the appropriate equipment takes less than a minute, so it’s easy enough to grind your wheat right before you need to use it. If you have extras, you can store it in the freezer to use a tablespoon at a time as a thickener or sourdough feeder. But generally speaking, it’s best to use the flour you grind right away. I have no experience with grain mills, so I will direct you Kelli at Lady of the Barn, who is also participating in the 5 Day series, and presented the results of her extensive research on grain mills earlier this week. She will direct you to the best grain mills for your purpose. What I do have experience with is my Vitamix! With a Vitamix dry blade, you can grind wheat berries in a minute! It’s so easy to use, and I love that it’s a multi-purpose appliance. Aside from my yogurt machine, my rule for the kitchen is that all of my appliances must be multi-taskers, and the Vitamix certainly is that. I use it at least once a day, and for all kinds of things: smoothies, coconut milk, rice milk, brown rice flour, milk shakes, ice cream, etc. etc. But I especially love to use it for grinding fresh flour. And whaddyaknow, I actually made you a video about it! This is my first ever vlog, can you believe it? I’ve been blogging for how long, and this is my first vlog? Crazy! And for you non-video-watchers (because I confess, I am one), I’ve written out my flour grinding method below the video. Enjoy! My Flour-Grinding Vitamix Method
That’s all there is to it! To clean it, you can fill the container half way with water and a drop of dish soap, and blend it on high for about 30 seconds, then rinse. When there’s just dry dust from grains, Isimply give it a good rinse and let it dry. Purchasing a Vitamix with a dry blade costs about $600, plus shipping. Gulp. I know! El Cheapo here can’t even think about that cost without shuddering! But you have a few options:
And if you think a Vitamix is still not worth it, I strongly urge you to think again. I normally don’t pay anymore for anything than I have to, and I’m famous for buying the cheapest thing possible. But can I tell you how many blenders and food processors I burned through before I finally threw up my hands in defeat and declared I wouldn’t purchase another one until I purchased a Vitamix!? I wasted probably several hundred dollars anyway on machine that just didn’t last. The Vitamix (a new one) comes with a 7-year warranty and usually lasts much, much longer than that. Well. I seriously did not intend for this post to be such a Vitamix commercial, but I just got excited and a little carried away! Ahem. At any rate, I can assure you, Vitamix did not sponsor me in any way for this post, but I am a Vitamix affiliate. So if you click on my Vitamix links and make a purchase (yay, you!), then I will earn a small commission. The good news for you is that you also earn $25 in free shipping just for clicking my link, a win-win in my opinion! Or you can take my advice and wait until Vitamix comes to Costco for a better price. I totally understand, because that’s exactly what I did. At any rate, I really think you need to go get yourself a Vitamix. And grind some grain, baby!
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| Healthy 2Day Wednesday {Week 55} Posted: 05 Jun 2012 07:00 PM PDT Welcome back to Healthy 2day Wednesdays! Rachel of Day2Day Joys and I are so excited to be joining you once again. So glad to have Rachel back with us this week!
 Link up to either of our blogs with your favorite healthy post!
Sara from Your Thriving Family gives you a super simple recipe for some yummy guacamole, which will be great this summer!
Sarah from Nature’s Nurture give an awesome tutorial on freezing fresh fruit with some beautiful pictures, this is very helpful to me!
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| 5 Days with Whole Wheat Flour: Why Whole Wheat? Posted: 05 Jun 2012 04:00 AM PDT
Yesterday, we talked at length about the different varieties of wheat and wheat flour available. Today I’m going to spend a little more time specifically discussing whole wheat flour, and why it’s a better choice for cooking and baking than its white counterpart. First of all, let’s look at a kernel of wheat:
Each part of the wheat kernel is full of nutrients, so the most wholesome way to eat it is in its entirety. This chart by the USDA shows you the difference between flour made from the entire kernel of wheat (whole wheat flour) and flour made only from the endosperm:
As this chart shows, white flour has significantly less of every single nutrient found in wheat! Clearly, the whole grain is the more nutritionally beneficial choice when it comes to flour. This was clearly obvious in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when steel roller mills were introduced, and Americans began consuming large quantities of white flour for the first time in history. Diseases caused by vitamin B deficiency became widespread and it wasn’t until the 1930s that the reason was discovered: it was the nutrient-deficient flour! Unfortunately, instead of returning to whole wheat flour production, companies instead began adding synthetic vitamins and minerals back into the flour after it was milled. Dr. Elmer Cranton sums it up like this:
So we have established that whole wheat flour is healthier than white flour. Well. Not so fast. There are plenty of people who believe that the bran is problematic for human digestion. The issues get seriously complicated: read Katie of Kitchen Stewardship’s lengthy series on the topic of wheat, grains and soaking here to get an idea of all the science that goes into studying this question. To sum up, a substance called phytate is present in the bran and is said to bind with minerals and prevent the body from absorbing them. This would mean that eating the grain whole is not nearly as nutritious as one might think. Many people try to get around this by soaking the flour in an acid solution to activate phytase, which breaks down the phytic acid. Others sprout the whole wheat berries for the same reason. Still others advocate sourdough bread-making methods, and even others actually recommend using white flour if you can’t/won’t soak or sprout the wheat. And then there’s the camp on the opposite side that believes the phytates actually serve a useful purpose in binding to certain minerals: after all, our bodies typically only need minerals in small amounts . Aligned with them are others who believe that, aside from their tendency to bind to minerals, phytates have other useful services in the body that protect from certain diseases, including cancers. This side of the debate also tends to believe that the typical processes of baking bread (the use of yeast or sourdough, the rising, and the baking) all serve to reduce the phytic acid to the extent necessary for the body to absorb the nutrients it needs. Besides which, they say, this whole thing is only an issue for people whose diet largely consists of grains: if you eat enough fruits, vegetables, proteins and healthy fats, you don’t need to worry about the few minerals you’ll lose in your whole grains. What do I think? I tend to side with the latter camp. Honestly, the issues regarding wheat and nutrition are complicated and practically require an advanced degree in botany, biology and chemistry… and I am no scientist. I don’t think there are definitive answers for one side or the other. But after reading information from all sides of the issue, I am satisfied that the normal process of cooking and baking, combined with the body’s digestion process, is sufficient to make use of the phytic acid, and to accomplish its job both in the wheat itself and in the body. However, I also tend to agree with those who suggest that in its unaltered state, whole wheat can be difficult to digest, and that traditionally, the bran has been largely sifted out. The resulting sifted flour was not quite the nutritionally deficient all-purpose flour we are familiar with today, but neither was it straight-up whole wheat. My conclusion? It might be the best of both worlds to mix a little white (unbleached unbromated) flour in with the whole wheat when baking, especially in recipes like cookies and cakes where there is no rising or sourdough/yeast involved. On the other hand, if you don’t experience any digestive issues, I don’t think there’s any harm – and possibly great benefit – in baking with 100% whole wheat flour. I would say that using anywhere between 50-100% whole wheat flour in a recipe is nutritious and beneficial, and at the very least, better than the average American diet of 100% refined white flour. For more information: The World’s Healthiest Foods: Whole Wheat Health Banquet: Whole Wheat Nutrition Dr. Cranton: Modern Bread, the Broken Staff of Life
Stacy Makes Cents: Why I Don’t Soak Grains
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