Whole Wheat Bread Recipe

January 5, 2011 By Budget Saving Mom 6 Comments

My preschoolers have ben learning the letter B this week, plus we have been talking about bread on this blog, so it seemed only natural to experiment with lots of different bread recipes. So you can expect several different recipes from me over the next several days. That is the wonderful thing about blogging, I can actually share my recipes with people which makes it even more fun to experiment!!

Whole Wheat Bread Recipe

This is a recipe for those of you that don’t have bread machines. It was actually quite fun to make! I gave my four year old a little piece of dough and she and I needed together for about nine minutes. I haven’t kneeded bread in a long time since I have a bread machine, and I forgot how fun it was. I always think it is fun to play with your food, and really what could be more relaxing than punching dough over and over. OK, maybe I’m weird, but I really did enjoy it. Plus, my daughter was SO cute kneeding her little loaf!

2 cups freshly ground whole wheat flour
1 cup oats finely ground
2 tsp yeast
1 T salt
1/2 cup ground flax seed
1 T brown sugar

2 cups milk
1/4 c. honey
1/4 c. coconut oil or olive oil

Mix together all dry ingredients.

Whole Wheat Bread Recipe

Heat the milk, honey and oil on the stove just to combine it well.

Whole Wheat Bread Recipe

Add the wet to the dry and mix.

Whole Wheat Bread Recipe

Kneed the bread for about ten minutes.

Cover and allow bread to rise 10-15 minutes.

Whole Wheat Bread Recipe

Form dough into 2 pretty loaves and place in loaf pans.

Allow the dough to rise to at least twice the size. It is cold and winter here, so I turned my oven on and then off & let them rise in the oven with the door cracked.

Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes.

Enjoy!! Sorry that I have no pictures of the final product. We ended up having homemade spaghetti and bread with family & the bread was all gobbled up before I could get a picture. (-:

How To Afford Whole Wheat Berries

January 4, 2011 By Budget Saving Mom 16 Comments

How To Afford Whole Wheat Berries:

So, hopefully yesterday, I convinced a few of you that whole wheat berries are a ton better for you than white flour. However, we still want to save money while we are trying to eat healthy, right? So, how do I manage to get inexpensive wheat berries?

I have bought my wheat berries from many different places just depending on sales. I usually buy organic hard red wheat berries. I think that these are excellent to bake with, they also typically are about 15% protein which is pretty good. Typically I pay $12.50-$20 for 50 pounds. White flour is usually $.50 a pound. So, 50 pounds is about $25 if you buy your flour in five pound bags from the grocery store. So, by buying wheat berries, I am actually cutting my flour bill by as much as half AND I am being healthier. I know that many areas on the country are not able to get their wheat berries for this price, but the following are some ideas of where to start looking.

Where Can You Find Wheat Berries:

Now, this is the tricky question. I am very blessed to have many local resources around me. However, anyone can buy wheat berries, but the prices may vary some for you. Here are a few of my suggestions:

Find a local mill. We have a local mill that we are able to buy from if we have a large enough order. Several families go in together and we typically will buy 1,000 pounds of wheat berries total and split them among the families.
Save up your Swagbucks and buy these from Amazon. I do this for many of my other grains, such as millet, rye, barley and quinoa.
Find a local farmer who is willing to sell directly to you.
Look for local co-ops.
Go in with other families so that you can all share the shipping & hopefully get a lower price per pound.
If you have Amish in your area, go to their stores and see if you can purchase some in bulk. We do have Amish in NC, and they have stores in Elkin and other towns.
If you are friends with any Mormons, you can see if you can get in on their orders. They store food for years, and are able to get wheat berries very affordably.
Look around online. Here are some of the current prices/places to buy I found: (Please note, I have not ordered from all of these places, so make sure to use your own judgement.)

- Bob’s Red Mill Hard Red Wheat Berries 25 pounds for $18.24

- 25 pounds for $25 Amazon.com (Use your Swagbucks to get this FREE.)

- $.90 a pound here

- Honeyvillegrain has more expensive wheat, but the shipping is only $4.99 & shipping can add up elsewhere

- Barryfarm (prices vary based on what you order.)

- Dutch Valley Foods (I have ordered from here several times.)

How To Store Your Wheat Berries:

Many places will sell wheat berries in food buckets that are ready to store. While this may be very convenient, it can also be expensive. I typically get my wheat berries in tough paper bags. I then transfer the wheat berries into a food grade plastic container. The orange paint buckets from Home Depot are actually food grade if you look at the number on the bottom, and they are only $2 a bucket. Also, I have bought mylar bags with oxygen absorbers. These bags allow the wheat berries to stay fresh longer as well. When you get your wheat berries, my mother always taught us to stick the bags in a freezer for a week, pull out the bags for a couple of weeks and then stick in back in the freezer for a week. This should kill any bugs or eggs that might be in your wheat berries. I do not always do this step (sorry mom if you are reading this!), and I have never seen any bugs. I am sure that my mom is right, and I might regret this one day . . . but hopefully not. (-:

How Many Wheat Berries Do I Need?

Really the amount depends on your family. Our family of six (five that are eating) will go through about 400 pounds a year. However, I make everything from scratch including bread, tortillas, cookies, cakes etc., so, the amount can vary per family.

Where To Find A Bread Machine:

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, for years I just bought whatever bread machine was available at my local Salvation Army, Good Will and garage sales. Those bread machines tided me over until I could afford a more expensive bread machine via Swagbucks. I would not bother buying a new bread machine that only has one paddle. These can be pricey, and whole wheat dough will wear out most bread machines. If you do decide to buy a new machine, I would save up for a heavy duty bread machine with two paddles such as a Zojurishi bread machine.

So for the rest of the week, I will be sharing a few recipes that my family loves including one for those of you that don’t have a way to grind dry wheat berries using your food processor. I might even share a video of me making the bread so that you can see just how fast it is. (-: I promise, you can make delicious, healthy, homemade bread in less than five minutes.

Filed Under: Organic, Wheat/Bread Tagged With: How To Afford Whole Wheat Berries

White Flour Vs. Whole Wheat Flour – New Year’s Resolution Use Whole Wheat Flour

January 3, 2011 By Budget Saving Mom 16 Comments

Yay! This is the first day of 2011 where I will be starting to try and blog more about ways to eat healthy, organic, natural and real foods on a budget. I will also talk about changes that we have made with cleaners, shampoo, conditioner, face wash, deodorant etc. (Yes, I do make all of these items now.) It has taken me a couple of years to get to where I am now, and I want to share with you guys some of the changes that my family has made over the years to have a healthier lifestyle, but not break the bank.

I decided to start my posts with the first change that I personally made with my family. I knew where I wanted to be with changes to our lives eventually, but boy did it seem overwhelming at first. I decided that we could just continue on the way we were, or I could slowly make changes. My daughter’s asthma is what really made the decision for me. I really wanted her health to improve, and after reading numerous books, I thought that eliminating chemicals was one way that we could help her.

I have read Nourishing Traditions, The Makers Diet, The Gaps Diet, and done tons of research at the Weston A. Price Foundation. I have also read quite a few books about herbs and ways to heal with foods and herbs.

I realize that everyone’s ideas of how to eat healthy vary. Some people are vegetarians, some people eat all organic, some people eat all raw, and there are many other diets out there. For me, we just try to eat food as close to the way God made it as possible. I figure that God knew what he was doing when he made the food for us. We eat some raw food, cook much of our food and we eat meat. Since God told Noah that he could eat meat when he came off the ark, I figure that our family can too.

I know that this may or may not be something that all of you are interested in. Some of the tips and suggestions that I make might seem too difficult to you. I suggest that if you do want to start introducing a healthier lifetstyle, just take it one step at a time. You can follow along in the order that we made the changes, or make your own changes.

I know that some of you may not be interested in these posts, and that’s fine. Just do what is best for your family and skip these posts, but for the many of you that are interested, I hope that you really enjoy these posts!!!! Now on to my post . . .

Whole Wheat Bread:

Bread seemed like the quickest and easiest change for me to make when I first decided to make healthier choices. Now before you get overwhelmed at the idea of making homemade bread, I just want to let you know, I spend about 5 minutes twice a week making bread. This was not a huge time investment for me, and I knew that I would be able to stick to this change.

If I am running low on time, we will often have sandwiches or cheese toast. Plus, my family really enjoys bread. I had been buying bread from the store, but decided that I would start making my own bread. I bought a bread machine for $5 from The Salvation Army, & I was ready to go.

I have been through many bread machines over the years since whole wheat flour can cause them to wear out, so I definitely suggest finding one at your local Good Will or Salvation Army. Ours seems to always have them available. Eventually, we saved up our Swagbucks and bought a really nice Zojirushi Bread Machine. It has two paddles instead or one, and is strong enough to handle whole wheat bread long term. My family has been using them for years and they still work great!

White Flour Vs. Whole Wheat Flour:

I try to cook as much as possible with whole wheat flour rather than white flour. Why? White flour is bleached and broken down. The germ, middlings and bran are removed and all that is left is the endosperm. Bleach is then added to flour to reduce the risk of spoiling. There is also unbleached enriched all purpose flour that is bleached by oxygen rather than chlorine. In both cases, the nutrients are removed, and some are artificially replaced.

Whole wheat is actually full of vitamins, minerals and even protein. It also has more fiber since the germ, middlings and bran are still attached, and everyone is always saying that we need more fiber in our diets. There are 44 minerals and vitamins that are found in whole wheat. Whole wheat is a complex carbohydrate that does not usually effect the glycemic index. You can read more from the Weston A Price foundation about why whole wheat is better for you than white flour. There are many studies that have shown the decline in health once people began eating white flour rather than freshly ground whole wheat.

I am sure that some people don’t know that wheat actually starts our as wheat berries. These wheat berries can be bought and stored for more than 20 years. Pretty neat, huh! Not that my wheat berries ever make it even a year, but it is still good to know. (-: These wheat berries have to be ground to make flour. Sounds kind of tough doesn’t it? Well, guess what, it’s not! It is really super easy to do.

It is best if you can grind your own wheat because the nutrients begin to diminish 3-6 days after it has been ground, plus the wheat germ oil will make the flour go rancid a few days after it is ground. I grind my wheat a couple of times a week. If I have any extra wheat, I just stick it in a bag in the freezer to use when I bake again.

When I first started grinding wheat I just used the grinding attachment on my Kitchen Aid mixer to grind the wheat. My husband bought me a Blendtec for Christmas which I love, and I now use it to grind my wheat. I am still looking for a great deal on Craigslist or a garage sale for a grain mill, but for now the Blendtec works great! These devices allow you to take dry wheat berries and grind them into flour. (I actually soak my wheat berries and sprout them, dehydrate them then grind them. This is an extra step that I will talk about later in the week that gets rid of phytic acid.)

If you don’t have something that you can grind the wheat in, but have a food processor, you will be able to grind your wheat as well after soaking your wheat berries. I will go through this method later this week with a recipe, so don’t worry if you don’t have a way to grind wheat berries dry, you still can once they have been soaked.

Now that I have told you what I am doing, and a little bit about how, tomorrow I will go over how to switch over to whole wheat on a budget. I always have to find the best prices I possibly can you know. (-: