We've recently purchased a mill blender to make our own flour. It's a heavy-duty blender with a nuts & seeds milling option.
We used it to mill wheat berries into coarse whole wheat flour.
The clouds of bran filling the kitchen like fairy dust and landing on the cabinets, our hair, the counter, and the floor were well worth it!
We fermented the resulting flour and baked sourdough loaves with it. (Picture above taken just before baking)
Results:
- Texture: nice bite. Coarser, denser, with more bran and less rise than sourdough loaves made with store-bought whole wheat flour.
- Tint: a tad darker than our typical sourdough bread.
- Flavor: tangier and wonderfully fresh.
- Aroma: very fresh and pronounced.
As for price, the wheat berries were not cheap, but that could be down to where we bought them and the fact that our local health food store did not offer bulk options, only small bags, so we needed to get several of those.
Overall, the flour we ground ourselves came pretty close to the brown wheat flour we usually use, only fresher, more aromatic, and more flavorful.
It's more work, but is fresher. Really a question of preference.
We love both.
To read more sourdough content, check out the following links: