A Flour Mill Is A Preparedness Essential For Homemade Bread
Wheat berries without a flour mill is like an oven without heat. You can’t make your own bread if you can’t mill the wheat to flour…
For the serious prepper, one of the most common food preps within the category of ‘dry goods’ is wheat (wheat berries). The essential ingredient for making your own bread from scratch.
Buckets of stored wheat is a common sight in a prepper’s food pantry. A single 5-gallon bucket of wheat holds about 47,000 calories; it can produce about 25 loaves of bread, and will store for decades. (See details here)
The thing is — you can’t make bread if you can’t mill the wheat to flour.
Here’s what you need:
When choosing one, check the reviews – be sure that the mill will grind the wheat berries into ‘fine’ flour. Apparently many cheaper models don’t, although claiming that they do.
If you intend to use it often, you will need to adhere to the phrase “you get what you pay for”. Quality comes with a price.
‘Manual’ or ‘Hand’ operated Flour Mill
The ‘Country Living Hand Grain Mill’ is one of the best, and it’s actually ‘Made in the USA’. I like the fact that it has a pulley so you can adapt another method of turning it other than ‘elbow grease’. It is expensive. But it will survive Armageddon ;) and if Armageddon doesn’t happen it will survive many generations.
The ‘Wonder Junior Deluxe Hand Grain Flour Mill’ is likely the ‘next best’ in quality and I believe it is the most popular flour mill in the hand-mill category for the serious prepper – although still pricey.
‘The Grain Mill’ is a decent entry level mill, and is very popular due to its price point. I don’t have this one, but I suspect that over time and hard use that it ‘may’ devolve. Read the reviews though… it may be okay for you.
Electric Flour Mill
While during TEOTWAWKI a hand operated flour mill will undoubtedly ‘work’, an electric flour mill will only function if you have a source of alternative power (e.g. solar power?). But even that might be down – given a scenario like an EMP…
With that said, note that a hand operated flour mill will take lots of ‘elbow grease’ and time to grind wheat to flour compared to an electric mill. For those who have the luxury of excess funds, you might consider one of each…
Two quality electric flour mills, both similarly priced:
We have used the NutriMill for years – and it has held up to quite a substantial amount of milling and bread-making so far.
Homemade Wheat Bread Recipe (whole wheat sandwich bread)
From the book, “Whole Grain Baking (King Arthur)”
Mrs.J has been making this one lately…
3 cups of milled flour
2 Tbsp orange juice
1 cup lukewarm water
4 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp sugar
1 heaping half cup dry potato flakes
1/4 cup dry milk powder
1-1/4 tsp salt
2-1/2 tsp yeast
2 Tbsp wheat gluten
3 Tbsp dough enhancer
I would like to hear from those of you who may have any of the above mentioned flour mills, or any other brand, your experiences, and/or your homemade bread recipes…