Eat Grains

Excellent Health Benefits with Whole Grains

Archive for May, 2007

Honey -vs- Sugar in baking with whole wheat.

May 30th, 2007

If I had a dime for every sad loaf of bread I made when I was first learning to bake freshly milled whole wheat yeast bread – I would have enough money to put my son though college this year!

It was these trials and errors that lead me to writing Tips #10- #13 which are a medley of this vs. that.

These tips are for a whole wheat loaf of bread using freshly milled four.

Honey:

You will need to decrease the water by approximately 1/8 of a cup when using 1/4 cup of honey instead of sugar. Ive found no matter what the recipe calls for (sugar or honey) decreasing water always helps if I choose honey.

There will be a slightly honey taste so choose your honey wisely. If you dont like that taste of honey try another. Tupelo honey has the least strong flavor while Orange blossom and Clover are quite strong.

Sugar:

Try to use the least amount of refined sugar possible. Using Evaporated Organic Cane Juice or Sucanant may be in exact measured proportions as a replacement for refined sugars.

Always put it in the water to dissolve.

You may find other things that work well for you, but these are some things I wish I had thought of in the beginning!

Posted in Wheat Information, barley, wheat, wheat and grain | No Comments »

Using the Beans and Grains in Ezekiel flour

May 21st, 2007

Here's another great tip to Milling Grain.

Most vegetarians know that combining a legume (bean) and whole grain make a complete amino acid (protein). Most frugal and starving artists know that beans and rice is a good hearty meal for pennies. Most Southerners know that pintos and a grain (cornbread or rice) can cook all day and fill you up for all night! So why not combine these into a useful flour?

Funny you should ask. Seems that someOne thought of that long ago. In Ezekiel 4:9, God gave the prophet a recipe. Ezekiel was to eat only that recipe for 430 days. I would say for that length of time and given the Author of that cook book, it must have been a pretty complete spectrum of nutrients, dont you think?

We sell the combination of grains and beans that make up an Ezekiel Flour, but there are a few tricks to using this flour.

Mill this mixture of organic beans and grains on whatever level your mill will take the largest bean.

If you use it for fasting as Ezekiel did. Follow the recipe we send you with it.

If you want to use it to make complete protein pancakes, waffles or tortillas use half whole wheat and half Ezekiel Flour. We think the taste is better than straight Ezekiel flour pancakes.

If you want to make a loaf bread, you will need to decrease the moisture of your usual recipe and increase the vital wheat gluten that you usually add to over compensate for the low gluten grains and beans.

It also makes a great soup!

Have fun experimenting with this flour. The taste is quite powerful – but it is packed with nutrients

Posted in Grain Resource, Wheat Information, barley, grain mill, oats, organic grains, organic wheat, spelt, wheat, wheat and grain, wheat grinder | No Comments »

Different Grains differ in use – even wheat types

May 20th, 2007

Well, it doesnt take a rocket scientist to realize that you cant make wheat bread out of corn meal. But it can be confusing to know just what type of grains work best for what type of recipe. I hope these tips will help you to begin sorting out some differences among grains – even among types of wheat.

Freshly ground whole wheat is wonderful! But not all recipes work the same with one type of wheat. A brief list of wheat types and food types is:

HARD RED is best for breads and items that require high rising.

HARD WHITE will also rise well, but has a less heavy taste and lookthan the red. Both can be mixed equally to make a deliciously light bread.

SOFT WHITE is best for pastries and flat breads such as pancakes, tortillas and biscuits. Biscuits hold together better with part HARD wheat and part SOFT white wheat – just dont twist that biscuit cutter.

Other grains may make a light flour but lack the gluten to make a loaf and must either be inundated with gluten or used in other recipes suck as batter breads.

Rice Flour, Millet Flour and Bean Flours tend to be too grainy to be used alone.

Spelt can be used to replace most or all wheat, but because it lacks gluten, it will not make a loaf crownlike regular Wheat grains will. Also, you can NOT knead Spelt Flour very long (5-7 minutes max) or it will become gooey and not elastic like wheat bread dough.

We have many recipes coming to our site and in our upcoming cook book that I have developed and learned by trial and error just how to use some of the varieties of wheat and other freshly milled grains. It is my hope that my blunders and failed experiments will help other find the adventure in trying many different grains and recipes!

Posted in Grain Resource, Wheat Information, barley, grain mill, oats, organic grains, organic wheat, spelt, wheat, wheat and grain, wheat grinder | No Comments »

Weather effects freshly milled grains

May 11th, 2007

In my house, winter is usually my best time to bake my best yeast breads. I dont know if its the fire in the fireplace, the overly toasty house or just the dry heat from the heaters, but the loaf crowns best of all during that season of the year!
Look at some of our whole grain training videos for more information.

Here are some tips to different weather conditions that can effect your baking with whole grains:

When its humid or rainy outside, the moisture can get trapped more easily in the wheat or grain that has just been cracked by milling. Because it has been encased in its hull from first formation, it is now more susceptible to absorbing moisturethan dead flour that has sat on a shelf for months. So you may need to slightly adjust the water amount in your recipe or add more gluten to the mix to get the bread to rise. I personally avoid bread on rainy days and focus on tortillas and other flat or quick breads.

We tend to run the air conditioner when it is hot and dry outside and that too can effect the rise time. The air inside the house is cooler than the yeast needs to raise a loaf of whole grain bread. To fix this you can either place your loaf in an oven that has been turned on to 200 degrees F for one (1) minute only – and then turned OFF before placing the loaf. The other option is to tentit with a cloth over four inverted drinking glasses on top of a warm appliance (water heater, refrigerator). Just be sure there is no air conditioner vent blowing on top of that towel. One other choice is to place it on your stove top while the oven below pre-heats to bake it. One word of caution though is to place a Pyrex dish inverted belowthe bread pan as a buffer for the heat or the bottom will heat too fast and then tent it as mentioned before.

After learning to predict my baking by the weather outside, Ive baked fewer bricks and doorstops and been able to keep a consistent loaf of bread no matter the climate.

Posted in Grain Resource, Wheat Information, barley, grain mill, oats, organic grains, organic wheat, spelt, wheat, wheat and grain, wheat grinder | No Comments »

Milling Corn

May 6th, 2007

There are so many recipes that cornmeal plays a vital role. From Mexican dishes and puddings to Southern Cornbread this gold nugget has many uses. Milling dried corn kernels takes some bravery but the many uses are a wonderful payoff.

When milling corn, one thing I learned was that the grain is bulky and it will produce approximately half again as much meal once milled, so measure accordingly to avoid waist. Also, you will need to mill it on a coarser grinding level than other grains such as wheat or rice.

We use Organic Popping Corn for all of our corn meal needs. It does double duty of being able to be popped for a snack as well as works in every corn meal recipe I have tried without fail!

What to do with a surplus of corn meal after milling? Here are three tips for surplus cornmeal:

Save it in the freezer to dust pans for Pizza Crusts, English Muffins, Rye, Pumpernickel and French Breads. The dusting of the pans with cornmeal keep the items from sticking and absorbs moisture unlike wheat flours.

Make an instant cornbread mix using all dry ingredients andgive to friends! You can find the recipe on our site. All they have to do is add the egg and moist ingredients and they have freshly milled instant cornbread!

Save it in the freezer to add to your next 7 or 9 grain bread recipe.

Corn that is freshly milled has the same benefits as freshly milled wheat or any other grain. The Corn kernel stores for a long time and the fresh release of vital nutrients increase the health benefits!

Posted in Grain Resource, grain mill, organic grains, wheat and grain, wheat grinder | No Comments »

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