Having recently procured a grain grinder, I'm looking for economical
sources of stuff to put through it. My local natural food stores
carry a few things, and can special-order a few things, but there's
one thing in particular I'm having difficulty finding: hard white
wheat berries, preferrably spring wheat, preferrably organic. There
are lots of places I could order it from, but shipping is an absolute
killer for home delivery - a 25lb bag at $7 turns into almost $30
after shipping. It doesn't start to get economical (which, to me,
means $1/lb or less) until you order at least 50lbs, and even then
you're paying a heck of a lot for shipping relative to the cost of the
grain itself. Anybody know of any tricks to get around this shipping
problem, or else know any local sources in the Raleigh/Durham area of
North Carolina, USA?

Other grains I'm interested in a soft white wheat, hard red spring
wheat (locally I can only find winter wheat except by special order),
yellow and/or blue corn (not popcorn), rye, and spelt. Organic would
be preferred in all cases.

As an aside, it boggles my mind that the local Whole Foods, despite
its presumably extensive national distribution network, simply cannot
special order something which I can find a dozen sources for after
only 5 minutes on Google. They even carry Bobs Red Mill products, and
Bobs Red Mill packages hard white wheat berries, but Whole Foods
cannot order that particular product. It makes no sense to me.

TIA,

--
Randall

Randall Nortman wrote:

>Having recently procured a grain grinder, I'm looking for economical
>sources of stuff to put through it. My local natural food stores
>carry a few things, and can special-order a few things, but there's
>one thing in particular I'm having difficulty finding: hard white
>wheat berries, preferrably spring wheat, preferrably organic. There
>are lots of places I could order it from, but shipping is an absolute
>killer for home delivery - a 25lb bag at $7 turns into almost $30
>after shipping. It doesn't start to get economical (which, to me,
>means $1/lb or less) until you order at least 50lbs, and even then
>you're paying a heck of a lot for shipping relative to the cost of the
>grain itself. Anybody know of any tricks to get around this shipping
>problem, or else know any local sources in the Raleigh/Durham area of
>North Carolina, USA?
>
>

Try smaller health food stores. Quite often they get things without
paying for shipping from their suppliers. And they are more willing to
special order than a larger health food store.

The down side is that they are more focused on "organic" and "healthy"
than "good bread". You might have trouble getting a good grain from
them. Ask to see their catalog. You may also run into strange minimum
orders. Its worth mentioning that whole grains can last for centuries
in storage, so there is no real reason not to order larger quantities.

You might wind up being disappointed in the white wheat. Despite the
current craze for it, it's quite bland and doesn't really handle as well
as a red wheat.

Good luck,
Mike

--
....The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvaldis claims to be trying to take over the world...

Mike Avery mavery at mail dot otherwhen dot com
home baker ICQ 16241692
networking guru AIM mavery81230
wordsmith Yahoo mavery81230

You might find that your local store carries a particular brand but is
purchasing through a distributer.

If the distributer does not carry the product desired the store will
not be able to get it.

Randall Nortman wrote:

>On 2005-08-25, Mike Avery > wrote:
>[...]
>
>
>>The down side is that they are more focused on "organic" and "healthy"
>>than "good bread". You might have trouble getting a good grain from
>>them. Ask to see their catalog.
>>
>>
>
>How can I determine what wheat is good for baking without just trying
>it?
>
You can look on-line to see whether the web sites are emphasizing
"organic" and "healthy" or "bread quality". I have been consistently
underwhelmed by Arrowhead Mills flours and wheats. Guisto's is supposed
to be good, as is Heartland Mills.

>I know that I should generally aim for spring instead of winter,
>and of course hard instead of soft wheat,
>
I'm pretty sure you have that backwards. Winter instead of spring.
Winter wheat is a harder wheat than spring.

>The bag of red wheat berries I just bought from the
>Whole Foods bulk bin has some bits of grass and unidentifiable
>dark-colored particles I'm going to have to pick out of it, so I'm
>none too impressed with that source. (Or should I expect that even
>from the best suppliers?)
>
>
No, the grain should be clean and it should smell clean. If you're not
happy with the Whole Foods bulk bin, talk to the manager. The sort of
thing you are encountering is not the sort of thing that Whole Foods
strives for.

>>You might wind up being disappointed in the white wheat. Despite the
>>current craze for it, it's quite bland and doesn't really handle as well
>>as a red wheat.
>>
>>
>
>I've been baking with white wheat flour (King Arthur brand) for a
>while, and I quite like it. I usually blend it with red wheat in
>various ratios, though (most commonly 50/50), because it is a little
>bland on its own, as you say.
>
A bit of red wheat covers a multitude of white wheat sins.

> When I make pizza dough, though, I find
>that 100% white whole wheat is much better, because I don't like a
>very strongly-flavored pizza crust. Of course, my hope is that
>freshly-ground red wheat will have less of the undesirable flavors and
>more of the good flavors (as compared to pre-ground red wheat flour),
>but perhaps my hopes are too high.
>
>
I suspect so. There are two issues here. I don't know what sort of
grain mill you have, but it's worth mentioning that I am the village
atheist when it comes to micronizer type mills.

Some off-tastes in store bought whole wheat flours come about because
they are in storage and on shelves too long. Whole wheat flour goes
rancid in a hurry. Using freshly ground flour takes care of that.

However, there is still another issue. What sort of bread does the
freshly ground wheat make? I have found that micronized (whispermill,
nutrimill, etc) flour tends to rise very poorly. The recipes at the web
sites from these companies tends to have recipes that adds eggs, cottage
cheese, and/or vital wheat gluten. All this defeats the idea of a
simple bread. I personally don't like vital wheat gluten - it changes
the breads texture for the worst, causing it to become gummy.

If you look at Great Harvest bakeries, they have a mill with mill
stones, and they filter/sift their flour to remove some of the bran that
is hard on the breads rise. I am not convinced that eating 100% of the
wheat kernel is a nutritionally good thing, and I strongly feel that
using it doesn't help one make better bread.

Mike


--
....The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvaldis claims to be trying to take over the world...

Mike Avery mavery at mail dot otherwhen dot com
home baker ICQ 16241692
networking guru AIM mavery81230
wordsmith Yahoo mavery81230

On 2005-08-26, Mike Avery > wrote:
> Randall Nortman wrote:
[...]
>>I know that I should generally aim for spring instead of winter,
>>and of course hard instead of soft wheat,
>>
> I'm pretty sure you have that backwards. Winter instead of spring.
> Winter wheat is a harder wheat than spring.
[...]

I'm not looking to pick a fight, but I beg to differ. All my bread
books indicate that spring wheat has the highest quality protein in
terms of gluten strength, and most bread flours I've seen that bother
to specify are spring wheat, whereas winter wheat is more often found
in all-purpose flour. I have seen sources that say that winter wheat
is more nutritious and flavorful (though these sources never give
details on exactly what the nutritional differences are), and so some
bakers prefer winter wheat. (Some bakers looking for a European-style
flour would also probably prefer it for its weaker gluten.) And
studies show that 4 out of 5 Birkenstock-wearing health nuts (no
offense) who sprout their own wheatgrass also prefer winter wheat.

A Google search turns up a few sites which support the idea that
spring wheat has better gluten quality than winter:

http://www.smallgrains.org/whfacts/6CLASSWH.HTM
http://fooddownunder.com/cgi-bin/recipe.cgi?r=1138
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/crop1274

And here's one that makes the nutritional claim, and says that winter
wheat is preferred. However, this seems to be written from the
growers perspective, and it seems that winter wheat is much easier to
grow (which is probably why it's cheaper and more common):

http://www.breadinfo.com/flour.shtml

I'm sure there are better sources out there, but those are the first
few that Google turned up.

> I suspect so. There are two issues here. I don't know what sort of
> grain mill you have, but it's worth mentioning that I am the village
> atheist when it comes to micronizer type mills.

I got a Family Grain Mill (the version that mounts on a KitchenAid),
which is a slow-turning steel burr grinder. It gets good reviews
(http://waltonfeed.com/self/grind5.html#family) and the KitchenAid
version can be found for just under $100, which is much cheaper than
the stone mills out there. I dismissed micronizer type mills because
I want to be able to do coarse grinds and cracked grains as well.


> If you look at Great Harvest bakeries, they have a mill with mill
> stones, and they filter/sift their flour to remove some of the bran that
> is hard on the breads rise. I am not convinced that eating 100% of the
> wheat kernel is a nutritionally good thing, and I strongly feel that
> using it doesn't help one make better bread.

I think all the current research (and my wife is currently in a PhD
program in nutritional epidemiology, so by proxy I have some minimal
authority on the subject) indicates that the net effect of whole
grains in the diet, when they replace refined grains, is only
positive, no matter what phytates and their kin might do in a petri
dish. And if you do a long, slow fermentation (especially sourdough),
you'll get quite an improvement in digestability, although I don't
know if this has been studied extensively outside of petri dishes.
(And if there's one thing I've absorbed from listening to my wife,
it's that in vitro experiments can be rather unrepresentative of what
actually happens in the human body.)

But whether it makes better bread or not is pretty subjective -- it
depends on what characteristics you look for in good bread. It is
true that if volume and "fluffiness" are to be maximized, bran only
gets in the way. If you want subtlety in the flavor (or if for some
unspeakable reason you want your bread to be flavorless), bran is your
enemy (though white wheat is helpful in this regard). If you want a
denser (but not necessarily brick-like), moist bread with a hearty
flavor, well then 100% whole grain is the only way to go. Personally,
I like lots of different kinds of bread and I crave variety, and so I
occassionally make bread partially or entirely with refined flour.
(Though I always add wheat germ in its natural proportions when using
refined flour.)

--
Randall

If you have a Whole Foods close by, that might be your
best bet for bulk grains. And they usually have the
organic form for most of them...

irax.