Awhile back Kirk bought us a Victorio grain mill. Manual? Sure. And whisper quiet….unlike doing it my Vitamix blender’s dry container…where you need hearing protection. And you get a light upper arm workout. It only took 5-10 minutes to grind up enough flour for 2 loaves bread (and that was being interrupted constantly by 2 small children who wanted to “help”).
What I like most is I don’t have to freeze the wheat berries like I did before, when I used our Vitamix dry container (it heats up the wheat too fast if you don’t). We buy large bags of wheat from Bob’s Red Mill directly, and store them in sealed containers.
A short clip of it in action:
A few years back Kirk replaced my nearly worn out Breadman bread machine with a Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme machine. While it takes longer to produce a loaf of bread with it than a standard machine (think 3 hours 45 minutes and up), the bread is 2 pounds (many machines don’t go that big) and it produces a normal shaped loaf, with a gorgeous crust (it has 2 paddles as well, for kneading). Most often, I make the go-to recipe on the side of the machine, but with all-purpose flour, instead of bread flour. It turns out perfect with little effort on my part. I drop in the ingredients, hit start and walk away till a shy 4 hours has passed, as the houses smells amazing.
Wheat Sandwich Bread
Ingredients:
- 1 2/3 cups water
- 2 Tbsp olive or sunflower oil
- 3½ cups bread flour
- 1½ cups whole wheat flour
- 2 Tbsp granulated sugar
- 2 Tbsp dry milk
- 1½ tsp fine sea salt
- 2 tsp active dry yeast
Directions:
Following the standard directions for a Zojirushi bread machine, add the water, oil, then the flours, sugar, dry milk, and salt. Make a small divot, add the yeast in it.
Set for a standard loaf of wheat bread.
If you have a large enough bread machine (2 pound capacity), just follow the method for adding ingredients that it calls for. Zoji’s warm the ingredients for you (this is why a cycle takes longer), so with other machines you would need to use warm water instead, and stack the ingredients as above.
Once baked, remove from machine, let cool fully on a rack.
Makes 2 pound loaf.
For best results, once bread is fully cool, store in a large bread bag or 2 gallon zip top bag, and use within 1½ days. For long-term storage, once cooled, slice as desired and double bag, and freeze. Take out slices as desired, let thaw on the counter in a covered container.