Grinding Wheat With an Electric Grinder: The Basics

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One of the most asked questions I get is, “How do you make flour out of wheat berries?” The truth is most people know that bread is made from flour but they are not quite sure how the flour is made. Grinding wheat is a practice that is ancient but in recent years has become somewhat mysterious. My mother did not grind wheat and up until a few years ago, the practice was a mystery to me as well. There are a number of YouTube videos that compare wheat grinders and I recommend you watch some of those before purchasing your own grinder. In this post, I want to show you step by step how to grind wheat. Even though the process is simple it’s still a mystery to a lot of people. Hopefully, this will shed some light on this process and help you decide if it’s something you want to do for your family. If you are prepping for an off-grid scenario you’ll need a hand grinder; obviously, an electric mill will not work in that situation. Since I believe in rotating food storage I need a practical way to grind my wheat berries on the grid as well as off-grid; for this, you really need two grinders (but that’s another post). In this post, I want to focus on getting started with an electric grinder.

The Basics:

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This is the wheat grinder I settled on after doing a lot of research. It’s an L’EQUIP Nutrimill Grain Mill by BOSCH. I choose this model based on size and performance (at some point I will do a complete review but for now I just want to cover the basics of grinding wheat.)

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This is my bag of hard white wheat (more on the different kind of wheat in another post). White wheat has a milder taste than some other kinds of wheat like hard red wheat. The flour that I grind with this wheat is still whole wheat flour.

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I took this picture as soon as I opened the bag. This is what you can expect to see when you open a bag of wheat.

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 Here I’m about to place the wheat from the bag into the hopper of the grinder.

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 Here you can see I’m filling the hopper with wheat. (I know pretty basic but I wanted to show the entire process)

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After you’ve turned the grinder on and it grinds the wheat, you’ll remove the flour bowl. This is a picture of mine. You can see the bits of flour on the top.

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 Here I’ve just taken the top off so you can see the flour made from the wheat berries.

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After you’ve ground your wheat you’ll want to place the flour in the freezer. All flour starts to lose its nutrients after it’s ground. You may have tried to make whole wheat bread from whole wheat flour bought from the store and it tasted a bit off. It’s probably because the flour was rancid. White flour does not go bad as quickly as whole wheat flour because of all the processing done to it, but it’s not as nutrient dense.

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This is the amount of flour I got from a 25lb bag of wheat berries. I grind one 25lb bag about every 3 weeks. It’s just too much work to grind wheat by the loaf. Of course for an off-grid situation, this routine would change. Perhaps, in that case, my husband would build me one of those grinders that is hooked up to a bike.  But for now, all my flour is kept in the freezer as I only grind it every 3 weeks or so.

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 All the components of the L’EQUIP Nutrimill Grain Mill by BOSCH.

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 Like most grinders, the NuriMill will grind other grains. Here I’ve loaded some popcorn to make cornmeal.

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 This is the cornmeal or ground popcorn.

I hope I’ve taken some of the mystery out of grinding your own wheat. Now that you see how simple it is you won’t be afraid to try grinding your own grains.

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