You should Eat More Bread

I am eating bread like a glutton in the midst of a gluten-free, anti-grain, keto world.

And I’m not fat.

At least, I don’t think I’m fat.

It is actually really simple and you can eat bread every day (and be healthier) too.

SIDE NOTE:  Yes, I know all about Wheat belly.  Yes, I know all about soaking grains.  Yes, I have been researching this for years.  The TRUTH is remarkable.  (more on that HERE).  There are many wolves out there trying to sell books and make money.  God gave us wheat and it is good food (unless you are celiac – then please, don’t eat wheat).  But not all bread is the same.

The secret

The secret to health and bread is the home grain mill.

I have an electric grain mill in my kitchen.  Well, it is actually in my pantry, but I get it out several times a week to grind up assorted things.

An electric grain mill is just like a coffee bean grinder – but bigger.

It can grind up wheat berries, grains, corn and beans into flour.  It is as simple as using a coffee bean grinder and super fast.

With freshly ground flour, I make all sorts of lovely things to eat.

And they are so dang delicious.

Although a home mill will make your food fresher and more flavorful, this is not why I have a grain mill.

It’s All About Health

Years before I moved to a farm and bought a chicken, I was living in a neighborhood trying to figure out how to feed my family more healthily.

I was doing the best I knew to get fruit and vegetables into the little bodies living under my care, but I was always concerned that they weren’t getting what they needed.

The runny noses, the coughs, the battle never ended.

I met someone (Hi Nancy!) who was making bread and I was astounded.

Why would you make your own bread?

Bread costs 99 cents at Walmart.  It is so cheap.  Why would anyone go to the trouble to make bread from scratch when it is so easy and inexpensive to pick up at the grocer?

I was intrigued.

After much research, I learned that of the 44 known essential nutrients (needed to sustain life) that come from food are found in wheat.

Are you paying attention?

Nearly everything your body needs to thrive and stay healthy is in bread (made from freshly milled flour).

Bewildering.

So, I did more research.  I attended classes.  I listened to BreadBeckers workshops.  I read books.

Turns out, it’s true.

Bread really is the staff of life. 

It is the food we need.  It is what the human body can live on.

Don’t you love it when your grandmother was right?

It didn’t take long for me to decide that this bread needed to become part of my life.

I thought about the ramifications of this decision.

“Everything my family eats will be so much healthier if I take this step.”

• Bread, toast, sandwiches, buns, grilled cheese, french toast–every breakfast, lunch or dinner that involves a slice of bread will instantly provide an amazing jolt of nutrients into our diet.
• It doesn’t stop with loaves of bread – I can make pizza crust, muffins, rolls, tortillas, biscuits, scones, flatbread, crackers and they will all be filled with this goodness.
• The FLOUR – If I use this fresh-milled flour for baking cakes, battering and frying green tomatoes, thickening soups, and all my cooking it will add unknown benefits to everything we eat.

And then I thought about all the unknowns.

What diseases will we avoid because we are eating freshly milled flour?

What sicknesses will we not suffer from because our bodies are healthy enough to fight?

What long-term problems will we never battle because we bought a grain mill?

I wanted this miracle food.

BUT HOW DOES IT TASTE?

Once again I turned to my friend, Nancy.

If this bread has 40 of the 44 nutrients needed for life – what on earth would it taste like?

• Gritty?
• Chewy?
• Dry and crumbly?
• Does it have tough hulls of wheat in it?

Well, I was shocked when I first sunk my teeth into a slice of bread made with freshly ground wheat.

THE SOFTEST BREAD I EVER TASTED.

Simply amazing.

So delicious.

It is so soft and moist and perfect it doesn’t even need butter.

It’s that good.

I’m pretty proud that I’ve been making all my family’s bread since 2004.

And I’ve spent the last decade [and then some] developing the art of baking with freshly milled flour.  It is different from the store-bought flour.  It is a perfect, whole food.

No, the “whole wheat” flour (and bread) sold at the supermarket is not a whole food.  It is a lie.

Thanks to the governing authorities over our food, we are not given all the details.  Here in America, flour only must contain 51% whole wheat in order to proudly wear the label “whole wheat.”

That’s the first problem with storebought flour.

Wait, there’s more

Wheat oxidizes when it is exposed to oxygen.  This means it begins to deteriorate.  Like an apple.   Do you know how an apple turns brown once you slice or bite into it?  This is because of oxidation.  The same process happens with wheat, but you can not see it happening.

Once wheat is ground into flour it begins to lose its nutrition.  In 72 hours (after grinding), nearly all the nutrition is lost from that flour.

There is a way to preserve all those 40 vitamins and nutrients – bake it into bread or freeze the flour.

Do you realize that the flour being sold at grocery stores was ground into flour WAY more than 72 hours ago?

Do you know what this means?  It means the flour at the grocery store is mostly void of nutrition.

And Another Thing

In order to prolong the shelf life of flour sold in stores, they remove the bran and germ (the portion of the wheat berry that goes rancid quickest- which is also the portion of the wheat berry that contains the bulk of the nutrition).

Instead of using the whole wheat berry, they only use the endosperm and hulls (since these have a longer shelf life).  The endosperm and hulls not only have a longer shelf-life, but they are also lighter and fluffier.

So the supermarkets have a light baking flour with a long shelf life –  Great for stores, bad for us.

What do they do with the bran and germ that they take out of our wheat?  They make animal feed with it.

The cows are eating better than us

Of course, when the millers (the folks running the mills) first took the bran and germ out of the flour (years ago) people started to suffer from health issues due to the lack of nutrition.  People started coming down with things like Beriberi and Pellagra due to the loss of vitamins that were no longer in the flour.

Health officials tried to get the millers to reunite the parts of the wheat kernel for the flour, but it was too late.  Grocers loved the flour with the longer shelf life, people loved the light fluffy flour, and the Millers loved the cattle-feed business.

In order to keep the status quo, they opted to “enrich” the flour.

In short, they took out 40 vitamins and “enriched” it with 5.

But That’s not all

Unfortunately, the “enrichment” does not come close to putting in everything they took out, nor is the “enriched” version of a vitamin the same as when it is naturally sourced from real food.

Enrichment is a joke when you think about the trade-off.  Freshly milled flour has 40 natural, essential nutrients your body can readily absorb.  Storebought flour has 5 that are made in a lab.

The bread, rolls, pitas, bagels, tortillas, buns, crusts, crackers, pretzels, doughs, baked goods, flours or grains sold in most stores are all junk food.

The Truth

This leads to the unfortunate truth that if you want true “whole” wheat, fully intact, at the peak of nutrition, you might will need to buy a grain mill.

I have a NutriMill and I love it.  It is small (kinda).  It is easy to use.  It is handy.  I also have a cute hand crank model that I never use.

And it is Cheaper 

Although buying an electric mill and a mixer (it can make the bread for you) will cost you something, it will pay off in the long run.

My whole wheat bread is simple and contains just a few necessary ingredients:  wheat berries, yeast, oil, honey & salt.

A 50-pound bag of whole wheat berries costs me anywhere from $20 – $27 depending on the grain I’m buying.  When I add up all the ingredients I need to make my fresh bread it all comes to a grand total of about 25 cents per loaf.  That’s all it costs me to make my own bread.

The savings are undeniable.  Yes, it does cost me time to bake my own bread.  It’s worth the time sacrifice to me when I consider what I am getting:  nutrition, long-term health benefits, and cost savings.

To work breadmaking into my busy life, I usually plan a day every month and bake.  I pick a day at home when there is not much going on & bake away.  I usually bake 24 loaves (this is 4 batches of 6 loaves in each batch) on that day.  I freeze them and they will last us a couple of months.

Other times I’ll make a batch of pizza crusts for the freezer.  A couple pans of muffins.  Some flatbread.  Or maybe some biscuits.

Fresh Milled Wheat will Fix Your Bathroom Problems

I’ll never forget the day Mamaw looked at me and said, “Candi, I’ve been constipated for as long as I can remember.”

That, my friends, cannot be healthy.

All I’m going to say is that if you grind fresh wheat berries you will never have constipation in your home again.  No more stool softeners.  No more glasses of prune juice.  No more Activia.  No more glycerine.  No more tummy aches.

Whole Wheat Sweep

Consuming whole wheat is like a broom that sweeps out your intestines.

If I find myself eating something I’d rather not discuss (like fast food or junk food). I simply load up on the fresh bread and the questionable contents are evacuated.  This gives me a lot of peace of mind.

We all eat things that we shouldn’t sometimes.  Isn’t it nice to know that said food choice didn’t hang out in your lower intestines and wreak havoc for days or weeks?  When you consume whole grain bread, the occasional bad food choice is gone in hours, and we can move on to better food choices.

I’ve been grinding things for over a decade, so I don’t think much about it anymore.  If we want pasta, we grind some flour.  If we want pizza crust, we grind some flour.  If we want muffins, we grind some flour.  Bagged flour may be easier, but the health benefits are worth it for me to grind my own flour.

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Inside the membership content here, are dozens of bread recipes specifically created for freshly milled flour.  The Membership includes breadmaking instructions, articles, how to buy wheat grain and a 9-video course on breadmaking.  It is perfect for anyone interested in grinding wheat and making bread.

Stay healthy Everyone!

-Candi