Benefits to Milling your Own Flour

Here are 7 benefits to The Lazy Chef milling your own flour that may help you decide if it’s for you.

1 Freshly Milled Flour is More Nutritious
Wheat berries hold their nutrition completely intact, right up until the point at which they are broken open i.e. milled and turned into flour.You can sort of liken it to eating a fruit that has been freshly picked from it’s source. At this point, the fruit will be at the peak of its nutrition. Once you have picked it, it slowly diminishes in nutritional value.Eating the fruit a few weeks later (or possibly a few months later if you’ve bought it from a store!) is less nutritious than eating it when it’s been freshly picked.

2: Wheat Berries Can Be Cheaper than Flour

Wheat berries are harvested and milled into flour
Buying wheat berries can be cheaper than buying the equivalent amount (in weight) of flour. Especially when you buy in bulk. So in the long run, milling your own flour could save you a lot of money. However, this will be dependent on what you have available in your area though, so it’s worth checking out beforehand.

3: Freshly Milling Your Grain Often Gives You More Choice
One of the benefits of being able to mill your own flour is opportunity to experiment with any grain you wish, including gluten free grains like lentils, beans, or others that are sometimes difficult to get hold of as a flour in stores.

You can also play around with using the same flour ground down to different coarseness, as a way of adding different textures to your breads. For example, adding a handful of very coarse textured flour into a loaf made with finely ground flour, can bring some good textures to bread.

4: Freshly Milled Flour Brings Better Flavor
There’s no way to describe this one unless you’ve tried it. But freshly milled flour in bread tastes OUT OF THIS WORLD!

Because the flour is fresh and full of nutrition, it will taste different. You will get the full flavor of the wheat and bring a much more complex tasting flavor of bread than using even the most premium organic flours you can buy.

5: Wheat Berries Have a Much Longer Shelf Life than Flour
Whole wheat flours bought from a regular store will expire in about 6 months. White flour can last up to a year. But wheat berries, if left whole until you need them, will last indefinitely as long is it is stored in a dry, cool place.

This is one of the reasons why it’s also possible to save money and buy in bulk. You simply mill what you need, when you need it, and the rest will last a very, very long time.