Wheat Class Recipes

Tonight I am honored to be introducing the benefits and ease of grinding your own wheat to a local group of women, at least I don't think there will be any men there.  But if there are that is awesome!  The more people I can share this with the better!!!

First, for those that were not able to attend let me share how I got into all this in the first place...

My husband is what I call a survivalist, others would call him a prepper.  He insists we need to be prepared in case the world as we know it comes to an end. So when he started talking about storing wheat I asked him what he planned to do with it. He said that I was to bake bread with it. Of course I laughed and told him he was crazy!


About the same time I met my friend Melissa (click here for her blog) who I soon found out grinds her own wheat and bakes bread with it! Interesting that I was more easily convinced by my friend than my husband!!!  Anyway, Melissa gave me her old Bread Beckers recipe book and I immediately ordered the free CD from their website.

One of the sections of this CD made a huge impact on my view of this whole grinding wheat idea.  It quickly went from just being able to use the wheat we have stored to changing to a more healthy eating lifestyle and avoiding processed foods as much as possible.


Almost 4 years ago I made an investment in our health and bought a WonderMill and a Cuisinart. Then I had my husband bring me a couple buckets of the wheat he had stored and started baking bread. Yes, it really was that simple.  I started with the bread, and also muffins, waffles, and homemade instant oatmeal. Click on the links for the recipes.  The oatmeal does not use the wheat mill, but it was a big part of the change we made so I included it here as well.

Here is my detailed blog post on the steps I follow to making bread.  The post really did take longer to write than it does to mix the dough!
 
Recently I have expanded and have made Ezekiel bread, where I used the bread recipe but substituted Ezekiel mixture flour for wheat flour.  I also made some Oatmeal Cookies and my hubby experimented with Wheat Chips.
 
Here are some other links:
 
Other blogs I like:


http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/

http://www.simplylivingsmart.com/

http://paulasbread.blogspot.com/



Where I have bought wheat, other ingredients & supplies:


Bread Beckers Co-op
http://info.breadbeckers.com/coops/

Honeyville
http://store.honeyvillegrain.com/

Emergency Essentials
http://beprepared.com/

Whole Wheat Chips

My hubby found a recipe in my Wheat Cooking Made Easy cookbook by Pam Crockett. (A cookbook that I have not used nearly as much as I should because it is so wonderful).  Who knew that you could make chips that are so similar to potato chips you can barely tell the difference.  Love these!!! 

Wheat Chips

Mix together:
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups cold water
seasoning

For seasoning we used 2 tsp of taco seasoning, but you could use any kind of seasoning, use your imagination!  This is a fantastic recipe for a family experiment night.

Mix together and pour small amounts (thick chip sized) onto a non-stick sprayed cookie sheet.  This is very liquid and runny so be careful not to tip the cookie sheet to much when putting in the oven. 

Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes until crisp, then flip and bake 3-5 more minutes.  Again, finding the right combination of minutes is all part of the experimenting fun.

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Cookies

Early on I did not had much success with making cookies with whole wheat and I really have not experimented much.   But here is a recipe that does work well with freshly ground whole wheat flour.

Oatmeal Cookies

Combine until creamy:
1 cup butter
1 cup honey
1 cup sugar

Add and beat well:
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Combine dry ingredients and add to above, mix well:
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp  baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Then stir in:
2 1/2 cups quick oats
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Drop by tablespoonful onto ungreased cookie sheets.  Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes or until light golden brown.  Cool 1-2 minutes on cookie sheet then transfer to wire cooling racks until cooled.  Store completely covered.

Banana Cranberry Muffins

These are easy to make, very yummy, and freeze well.

Combine and mix well:
3 eggs
1 cup oil
3 mashed bananas
1 can of cranberry sauce

Combine dry ingredients in a seperate bowl:
3 1/2  cups whole wheat flour
2 cups sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp cinnamon

Mix dry ingredients into banana mixture and stir just until mixed.  For muffins fill about 2/3 full and bake at 350 for about 25.  They are done when a toothpick comes out clean.

This can also be baked as 2 loaves.  Bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes.

Special desserts at the beach

One of the things the kids love about vacation is what I call "Special Desserts".   Here is a sample of our "Special Desserts"

This was supposed to be a cup of ocean blue, but apparently when you add blue food coloring to french vanilla pudding it turns green.  So I improvised and we added gummy worms and frogs instead of fish and sharks and called it a Cuppa a Swamp.  They LOVED it!

Here is A Day at the Beach...watch the video for the description

HOORAY We get to eat it!

 This is what happens after you eat special desserts.  Pure silliness!

This is Daddy's version of a Day at the Beach.  You have to watch the video to really understand all that is going on here.  Yikes!

Special desserts = Special Memories

I WON

I WON this giveaway!!!  SO exciting!!!!   I haven't a clue in the world what I am going to do with all this cool stuff but it is such an amazing opportunity to learn! 

Thank you so much Azure Standard and big hugs to your little ones for picking my name!

http://azurestandard.blogspot.com/2011/03/giveaways-dont-get-any-sweeter-than.html 

Thanks to Laura at http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/ for letting me know about it! 

Baking Christmas Cookies

Here are the photos of the kids helping me bake Christmas Cookies. It was quite a day and they had a blast!!  Of course they all wanted to help, but it was difficult to get them all close enough to the bowl, so when Ben (of course it was Ben) started to climb on the counter to get closer, I thought "Well that works"!  So I told them that they could sit up there only because we were making special Christmas cookies.  They thought it was hilarous.

Here Ben is singing Jingle Bells LOL

Then I said it was time to lick out the bowl.  Carlee got the beater and the boys got the bowl.

Not exactly what I had in mind when I said "lick out the bowl" but they took it literally!  (of course it was Ben that thought of it first)

Sam tried a different variation!

And of course, whatever the boys do, Carlee has to try it too!

Carrot cake

Yesterday I tried a yummy carrot cake recipe and substituted with fresh milled flour. But I also baked them in some silicone bakeware that I was given. First mistake was to do three new things at once.

1. I baked them into loaves rather than cupcakes so I wasn't sure about the timing. I think they might be overdone.

2. The cake has a different taste to it that I can't quite place. So now I don't know if it is the change to the flour or a something that seeped out of the bakeware.

3. I also found that the cake did not come out of the bakeware well, I thought it was supposed to just slip right out. Well it didn't and I was so upset I threw them out.

I also realized that for baking I should be using a different type of wheat. I read that for breads and other doughs that rise, hard wheat is best. And for pastry type baking soft wheat is best. a few days ago we recieved our shipment of several buckets of grain, so all I have to do is organize it and get it set up so that it is easy to get into whatever bucket I need.

peanut butter cookies again

This time I used the pastry setting on the WonderMill to get a finer flour. Then I used the extra to make the same cookie recipe as before. The cookie dough seemed to hold together a bit better and they weren't quite as gritty. But they still aren't "really good" yet, they are still kind of dry which is I think because of the flour. I have to think about what to do to make them softer and moister.

peanut butter cookies with fresh flour

When I made the last batch of bread, I intentionally milled more flour than I needed. Partly because I needed more flour for the previous batch, but also because I wanted to bake some cookies. As I bake more I want to use more milled flour and less white flour.

Anyways I used this recipe:

3/4 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup peanut butter
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips

cream butter and sugars, beat in peanut butter, add egg and vanilla. In a separate bowl sift together flour, soda, and salt then combine and beat until mixed well. Bake at 350for 10-12 minutes


I used about 1 1/2 cups milled flour and the rest white flour. And I baked them probably 14-15 minutes. The end result was that they tasted ok, but a little gritty. Definatley willhave to grind the flour on the pastry setting to see if it would make any difference.

Yellow cake

My next project was a 4 egg yellow cake. I found the recipe in the Joy of Cooking cookbook. It turned out ok, bt don't think I folded the egg white mixture in properly. And I will put the pans in seperately next time. I had two pans on the top rack and one on th bottom. I got uneven baking on the bottoms of the pans on the top and the pan on the bottom baked faster. Definately edible and a sweet cake, but I think I will keep looking for that perfect cake recipe.

Cookies

I have only baked a few batches of cookies in my life, but when I was home at my mom's this summer I fell in love with her peanut butte cookies all over again. I remember there always being home made cookies in the house. She kept them in a yellow tupperware container in the cupboard and also seveal batches worth in the freezer in the basement. As a teenager I moved my bedroom to the basement and ate many frozen cookies!

And so, after my trip home and after seeing my kids eat all her homemade cookies, I want my kids to have homemade baking and meals. And the fact that we have just bought our first home and it is in the country somehow has changed my whole outlook on baking and cooking. It is no longer a chore but a blessing that I can offer to my family.

So my first two attempts at baking cookies were with my mom's recipes. And they pretty much flopped - they were edible but they just were not the same. I believe some of it has to do with the difference in US flour and Canadian flour. It tastes different and it bakes differently. So I decided to start from scratch and use new recipes. I tried a peanut butter cookie recipe from the peanut butter jar and they turned out really good - hoorray I can bake cookies!!