I home mill my own flour and need to know what is the correct grain to buy to make whole wheat chapati and other breads that are cooked on the stove top using a griddle (or cast iron frying pan).

According to my Indian cook books, chapati flour is called *atta*;  this is generally  defined as  a very fine whole wheat flour milled from the entire wheat berry. My problem - what kind of wheat is used for chapati flour?

When I research it on the 'net, I get articles that say it is hard wheat  or durum wheat. However, my cookbook "The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking" (by Yamuna Devi) says atta is made from *soft* wheat flour and goes on to suggest mixing two parts whole wheat *pastry* flour with 1 part unbleached white flour or *cake* flour if you can't get imported atta flour. This certainly suggests that *soft* wheat, not hard, would be the better grain choice.

I use a Nutrimill grain mill which can produce a finely milled flour. But what grain should I use - hard wheat? soft wheat? durum wheat?

Looking forward to your answers - thanks

Hello everyone.  I'm posting this as a feeler for anyone interested in whole, unground wheat berries.  We're a small farm in kansas, and are currently looking to cater to home-millers by producing and shipping custom amounts of wheat/rye/triticale depending on the demand for each.  We currently will have hard red winter wheat available as of about july or september, and depending on the interest, can make hard white winter wheat, rye, and triticale(a cross between rye and wheat) available as needed (by next year)  Please e-mail your interests, i.e, what kind of product you wish to see, typical amounts and shipping methods you wish to have available.  We want to be able to make our processes and services user-friendly, and meet the needs of as many people as we can.  Any suggestions are welcome.  kansas_winter_wheat@yahoo.com

I've been grinding much of my own flour lately, but I have a question for the more experienced millers here.

Do you pick over the grain before you mill it? I've been carefully picking it over first to remove grains that still have the hull on them, small seeds of some unidentified type, stones, and the occasional piece of field corn. 14# of spelt produced a couple of tablespoons (at most) of this mixed detritus, so I'm wondering if I'd have even noticed if I'd just left it be.

I'm using a hand-crank mill made by Porkert. It produces a pretty coarse flour that works best when soaked overnight, but the price was right ($60.50). On the other hand, picking over adds a lot of time to a process that's already slow by nature; I have to run the flour through 3 times to get it to a fineness I can live with.

Thanks for any advice anyone cares to offer!

edh

Hello,

I'm new here - Veronica Shelford, living in the Gulf Islands off the west coast of Canada.  I'm hoping someone will have had experience that can help me out.  I've just bought a grain mill (WonderMill) and starting grinding my own whole wheat flour for bread recipes I've been using for years, but the results are very poor.  The bread keeps collapsing in the middle.  The flavour is fine and the texture not bad apart from the collapsed area.  The gluten content of the flour appears to be fine.

Are there ways that one should alter standard bread recipes when using fresh ground flour?  Usually collapsing means too much water or too much yeast, in my experience.  But I've read here that fresh ground flour needs more moisture, not less.  Should one let the flour soak awhile before working it?

If anyone else has had any similar experience, and found their way through it, I'd be very grateful for any help.  Or even if not, suggestions will be very welcome.

Thank you!  This looks like a useful forum - glad I found it!

- Veronica

Hey folks,

Last week, I got my grain mill (the KoMo Fidibus Classic) and have been using it frequently every since.  Recently, I've been playing around with coarser grinds -- specifically, coarse cornmeal and cracked wheat.  While I can produce either with the mill, I inevitably get some flour along with the coarser pieces.  I've got two questions about this...  First, is it normal?  And secondly (assuming it is), how do you handle it?  I've been sifting to seperate the larger and smaller particles; is there anything better than that?  Could anyone recommend a set of sifters of various fineness?  I only have one, and eventually I'd like more variability.

Thanks!

-shakleford

From: Mike Avery <mavery@mail.otherwhen.com>
Subject: Stock up!
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:26:42 -0500

Hi,

I was touring a really neat bakery today here in Dallas. The owner
was telling me about flour prices, and they are scary! They have
pretty much tripled since the start of the year. For wheat, for rye,
and more than that for semolina.

If you can afford it, and if you have the storage space for it, stock
up on your favorite flours NOW. The full effects of the price hikes
haven't made it to the grocery stores, but that happy situation is
unlikely to continue for much longer.

Even more important than stocking up on flour, if you like pasta,
stock up. The price of semolina flour has gone up far more. It was
over $160 for a 50lb sack. This is like the ONLY ingredient in most
pastas, and the price will have to go up.

There are a number of factors in the price hikes. Some of them are
not really amenable to short term fixes. Some of them are beyond
anyone's control. Here's a few of them....

A number of wheat farmers have switched to growing corn for ethanol -
the government subsidies for this ill conceived project are just too
attractive for some farmers to say no to. The pendulum could swing
back the other way, but most observers say that by itself, this would
not have been a major issue - there would have been enough acres of
wheat being raised if it hadn't been for the rest of these issues.

Next, the dollar is in free-fall, dropping faster than (oh... just
think up your own tawdry comparison here). This has caused a year long...

Rise in fuel prices. It takes fertilizer to grow the stuff (in
conventional agriculture, anyway), fuel to tend it, and fuel to move
it and process it.

Next, the China and India have quickly growing middle classes who
want more wheat products. Pasta. Bread. Increased demand and a
dwindling supply ALWAYS causes problems. And they have lots of
dollars to spend.

And finally, the crops are bad this year, both in quantity and
quality. This is above and beyond the reduced acreage. As a result,
stocks of wheat are reaching record lows, and some industry
spokespeople have said it will take 2 to 3 consecutive good years to
bring things back to normal.

If you grind your own flour, stock up on wheat berries, they last a
LONG time. If you are a whole grain baker, you might consider
starting to grind your own flour. Whole grain flours have a limited
shelf life, and they will go rancid fairly quickly. How quickly? It
depends on storage conditions, but figure 6 months or so. The clock
starts ticking when the grain is ground into flour. Wheat and rye
berries have a very, very long shelf life. What about white
flour? With the bran and germ removed, refined flours have a much
longer shelf life than whole grain flours. Figure between 2 and 3 years.

In both the case of whole grain flours and refined flours, you can
extend their shelf life by freezing the flours. Remember, a full
freezer is pretty cheap to run. If you don't have one, look around
for a used chest freezer - they are cheap to buy, you can put more
into them than in an upright, and they are cheaper to run than an
upright freezer.

I would like to hear of anyone's experience using this mill with dent corn.

cb

I have read of the benefits of stone-ground flour vs. flour ground between steel plates.  Has anyone had the opportunity to own both types of mills and can give some insight?  I have a Champion grain mill but am curious if eventually I might benefit from purchasing a stone mill.

 thanks,

Esme 

Have not been on to the forums in some time, nor done much baking, but am ready to jump back into it with both feet!

I just read the thread on Rye, and thought I'd start a thread dedicated to rye.

I've been lurking here for a while, learning a ton and finding myself getting sucked in deeper and deeper -- which is not a bad thing! This site has inspired me to begin experimenting more in an attempt to improve my baking.