Tasty wheat

This lovely sack of organic wheat arrived yesterday.

I was interested in ordering from Demeter, as they're NSW-based, but as they have not yet emailed me their distributor list for bulk grain I went ahead and ordered from QLD in the meantime.

Both Robin and Kay from "The Oaks" were very friendly and helpful - and fast in sending the grain out, much to my delight. The variety of wheat they sent was a non-hybrid Hard Red Wheat "KXPF" originally bred in NSW with seedstock originally from Canada "Manitoba Red", and before that originating from the Russian Ukraine. The Oaks have used the same seedstock for the last 50 years. It is a very hard red wheat with a moisture content less than 11%, great for milling. They also state that it is grown on heavily mineralised soil and they gave a lot of information about their farming practices, which was a nice change from having no clue about the food you're putting in your mouth, where it came from, how it was grown, how it was stored etcetera.

They use diatomaceous earth in storage which has a ground flour consistency, is high in silica and kills weavels by its abrasive action. It is however NOT the diatomaceous earth used in swimming pool filters (which is produced using chemical processing to cause it to form a crystalline structure, which can cause respiratory irritation if inhaled).

In winter the Oaks also produce Gala Wheat, Rye, Triticale, Linseed, Fenugreek, Canary Seed, Winter Beef (Pole Herefords) and sometimes winter onions, chick peas and safflower. In summer they produce Millet (White French), Mung Beans and some birdseed millet (Japanese & Hungarian), watermelons, rock melons, pumpkins as well as purely grass fed beef. They do not use hybrid varieties or GE strains.

Tonight we milled about 750g of the wheat by hand using our Retsel Lil Ark grain mill, which took about 25 minutes or so, and then I baked a loaf of bread with it (about another 20 minutes preparation time, and approximately 30 minutes baking time, for a non-sourdough quick-rise yeast bread). We would motorise the mill but at the moment we're grateful for the exercise - it is fantastic upper body exercise and my refusal to buy bread more than occasionally each fortnight nowdays gives us the incentive to mill it. The bread was delicious, and heavy (as expected using whole flour and not giving much time for rise). We like it heavy though. Mmm, spread with delicious Gympie butter it is amazing.

The thing I've noticed is that when making dough from store bought flours (of any kind) my hands get very very dry afterwards - when I am making dough with wholewheat flour which has been freshly milled my hands feel moisturised afterwards - I guess because when you mill the grain it leaves the whole of the wheatgerm in, thereby preserving the vitamin E content. Wholewheat flour from the store is a poor, poor substitute, more likely to be rancid than white and still not containing the full spectrum nutrition (including the wheatgerm/vitamin E) of freshly milled flour.

I actually had a very busy night tonight as in addition to making bread I chopped up about 15 large beetroots and made them into a half dozen litre jars of beet kvass, which is a very nutritious fermented beverage/tonic. Consequently my hands are stained like blood. For the last jar I was preparing I ran out of whey so substituted kefir-whey as an experiment, so that will be interesting (wonder what alcoholic beetroot-ale would taste like... might be what I end up with, who knows).