But before we talk about wheat quality, a more few words of warning. If you think wheat goes rancid rapidly, rye is even worse. Rye flour goes bad so fast that when you buy it in the store it usually is the rye equivalent of white wheat flour. The germ has been removed. The bag may not say so. But it probably has. If you are going to make rye breads, even more reason to grind your own. Corn meal from the grocery store has usually been degerminated too. If it hasn't been, the oil in the seed's germ has probably gone rancid.
Grinding flour at home is easy these days. There is an abundance of at-home milling products and no shortage of hype about them. You'll find staunch advocates of stone mills. These produce the finest-textured flour, but are costly. The sales pitch is that stones grind at low temperature and do not damage the oils (remember the development of rancidity is a function of temperature) or the vitamins, which are also destroyed at high temperature. This assertion is half true. If you are going to store your flour it is far better to grind it cool. However, if you are, as we do, going to immediately bake your flour, what difference does it make if it gets a little warm before baking. That only accelerates the action of the yeast.
On the negative side, stone mills grind slowly and are very fussy about which grains they will grind. If the cereal is a bit moist or if the seed being ground is a little bit oily, the mill becomes instantly blocked.
Steel burr mills grind fast and coarsely and are inexpensive. Coarse flour makes heavy bread. The metal grinding faces tend to wear out and have to be replaced occasionally--if they can be replaced. Breads on the heavy side are still delicious; for many years I made bread with an inexpensive steel burr mill attachment that came with my juicer.
Some steel burr mills will also grind oily seed like sesame and sunflower. However, oily seeds can be ground far more easily half-a-cup at a time in a little inexpensive electric spice/coffee mill, the sort with a single fast-spinning propeller.
I currently think the best compromise are hammermills. The grain dribbles into a chamber full of fast-spinning teeth that literally pound the grain into powder. Since air flows through with the grain the flour is not heated very much. This type of mill is small, very fast, intermediate in price between steel mills and stone mill, lasts a long time, but when grinding, sounds like a Boeing 747 about to take off. It is essential to wear hearing protectors when using it.
Awareness of bread quality is growing. One excellent new U.S. business, called Great Harvest Bakery is a fast-growing national franchise chain. They bake and sell only whole grain breads; all their wheat flour is freshly ground daily on the premises in the back. Unfortunately, as of the writing of this book, they do not grind their rye flour but bring it in sacks. I can't recommend their rye breads. The founder of Great Harvest is a knowledgeable buyer who fully understands my next topic, which is that wheat is not wheat.
There are great differences between hard bread wheats; being organically grown is no cure all for making good or nutritious bread. Great Harvest understands this and uses top quality grain that is also Organic.
When I first stated making my own bread from my own at-home-ground flour I was puzzled by variations in the dough. Sometimes the bread rose well and was spongy after baking like I wanted it to be. Sometimes it kneaded stickily and ended up flat and crumbly like a cake. Since I had done everything the same way except that I may have bought my wheat berries from different healthfood stores, I began to investigate the subject of wheat quality.
The element in the cereal that forms the rubbery sponge in risen bread so it doesn't crumble and rises high without collapsing, is gluten. The word glue derives from gluten. The gluten content of various wheats varies. Bread bakers use "hard wheat" because of its high gluten content. Gluten is a protein and gluten comprises most of the protein in bread wheat; the protein content and the gluten content are almost identical.