Sharing my top three tips for things to consider before you turn on your mill.
A very exciting birthday gift
I was seriously excited to get a flour mill for my most recent birthday. So excited, that within minutes of opening my gift, I set it on the counter, turned it on, and started pouring in the wheat grains (which I also received with my present.)
But then once I had the flour all made, I needed to figure out what to do with it. Suddenly I had a thousand questions – What should I make with this flour? Could I follow regular bread recipes? How do I store the flour?
In my haste to start milling, I realized that I had a few things to learn related to fresh flour and how to bake with it. I honestly had given little thought to flour previously – nothing really beyond white and wheat flour, even though I’ve done my share of baking bread.
It’s been a month since my adventure with milling my own flour has begun, and I want to share a few tips for things to think about before you turn on your mill and start mindlessly grinding away like I did.
one of my first loaves with fresh flour
- Decide what you want to bake with the flour.
Determining what you will make before you mill will be helpful to know what type of grains you need.
You’ll want to choose your grains based on the flavor and the texture that those grains will give your dish. For example, for wheat berries, choose a soft wheat which has a lower protein content for biscuits and cakes, and hard wheat which has a higher protein content for breads. There are several ancient grain varieties that are worth trying as well – I’ve been enjoying spelt and emmer.
Or you might only have certain grains on hand, and choose what to make based on your supply!
You can choose a recipe that is specific for baking with fresh flour, or choose a recipe for regular flour, and make adjustments as needed to the quantity of flour if needed. You might need to use more flour than the recipe calls for. You also might need to mix for a longer period of time. Learn more about making adjustments on the Perfect Loaf (which shares other helpful tips as well!)
Generally for wheat berries, you may need to increase the amount of freshly-milled flour by ¼ for every one cup of flour, according to Farm Fresh Wheat.
- Figure out when you will bake.
If you want the freshest flour with the highest amount of nutrients, plan to bake shortly after you mill. I’ve read anecdotes that the nutrients begin to decline after the grains have been milled – although I’ll need to do some more digging to find out how much truth there is to this claim. Regardless, it seems reasonable to assume that using the flour soon after you mill it will provide the best nutrients.
To avoid spoiled flour, you will also want to use the flour within at most a week after milling it (or longer if you freeze it.) Fresh flour needs to be consumed faster than commercial flour, because the grains include oils that will go bad at a certain point. This flour should be stored in the refrigerator or freezer.
But sometimes you might not want to use your flour right after you mill it. For example, maybe you plan to make pancakes in the morning and want to have flour ready for you to cook them when you wake up. In that case, you can mill your flour the night before and keep it in the fridge for the morning.
- Estimate how much you will need to mill.
If you plan to bake only one loaf of bread, you might choose to grind just enough for your recipe (and a little extra for dusting/kneading, etc. Or if you have a full day or weekend of baking ahead of you, grinding up a bunch without measuring might make more sense.
Follow this conversion chart for how much grains you should mill. For example, if your recipe calls for two cups of flour, you will need less than 2 cups of grain – generally, ⅔ cup of grains will produce 1 cup of flour.
Wheat Berries to Flour Measurements
| Wheat Berries (in cups) | Flour Yield (in cups) |
| 2/3 cup | 1 cup |
| 1 | 1.5 |
| 1.3 | 2 |
| 1.65 | 2.5 |
| 2 | 3 |
| 2.3 | 3.5 |
| 2.6 | 4 |
| 3 | 4.5 |
| 3.3 | 5 |
Learn as you go!
Those are my tips to get you started. I think it’s also fine to learn as you go. For my first batch of flour, even though I wasn’t prepared and didn’t know what I was doing, the first loaves I made were still decent and we ate them!
PS – I think that if it’s your birthday and you get a special gift, you should definitely open it, try it out, play with it! Planning and doing your research is great, but if it’s your birthday just go for it 🙂
Please stick around for more! I’ll be sharing more on my journey to build skills in fresh-milled baking. Coming up: a video where I make a spelt and emmer loaf.