What to do with 200 pd hard red wheat

Man I am a feeling a little silly. I got a good deal on 200 pounds of hard red wheat. My first three attempts at using it to bake bread while not a heavy hard brick none the less turned out well not so heavy bricks.

Just out of curiosity yesterday I baked some bread with white bread flour and dang the bread came out light and fluffy. I used the same recipe for both and the difference was simply amazing.

Anyway now I got 200 pounds of hard red wheat and no idea how to use it. Any ideas?

Grind to semolina coarseness and try making some whole wheat pasta? For breads, try a mixture of your ground whole wheat flour and white flour.

ong said:

Grind to semolina coarseness and try making some whole wheat pasta? For breads, try a mixture of your ground whole wheat flour and white flour.

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I am thinking I will mix it half and half and give it a try. Thanks a ton for the pasta idea though. Hehe I love me some spaghetti

now you know when you see "100% whole wheat" on a label that it's a lie.

If you want your bread to rise and you want to use your own ground wheat flour, you need to add wheat gluten. Or, cut the flour with store bought flour.

I use vital wheat gluten. It's expensive but I only use 1/2 a cup per loaf. Also, you can sprout your wheat berries and add them to your bread. (now you're on your way to hippy-land).

Or if your girl is half hippy, you can sprout the berries, let it grow into wheat grass and juice it. chicks seem to dig that stuff.

Just like everything else I dove into this with out enough knowledge. For the christmas baskets I bought bread flour from the store but maybe soon I will try and venture whole wheat again with some gluten.

Malt some to make beer!

pnj said:

now you know when you see "100% whole wheat" on a label that it's a lie.

If you want your bread to rise and you want to use your own ground wheat flour, you need to add wheat gluten. Or, cut the flour with store bought flour.

Click to expand...

Why would you need to add gluten? Homeground whole-wheat flour has plenty of gluten in it. It's just a lot heavier because of all the bran and germ.

I would use it to make a Wit beer. I also add 3lb to each 10 gallon batch of beer I brew since I have a limitless supply.
I use a corona mill to grind it for the mash. It is pretty rough on my Monster mill.

Coarse grind it and cook it up like oatmeal. Mmmmm

Your post is a little broad for a specific answer. Imagine if someone posted "I bought 200 lbs of 2-row, made beer, and it sucks. What do I do?"

Whole wheat flour does need to be handled differently than white flour. You won't get the same end product with whole wheat as you would with white flour, but 100% whole wheat bread can be soft and doesn't need vital wheat gluten added, although there is a popular line of books where many of the recipes include it.

Poke around online. The bread forum has some very solid recipes.

TNGabe said:

Your post is a little broad for a specific answer. Imagine if someone posted "I bought 200 lbs of 2-row, made beer, and it sucks. What do I do?"

Whole wheat flour does need to be handled differently than white flour. You won't get the same end product with whole wheat as you would with white flour, but 100% whole wheat bread can be soft and doesn't need vital wheat gluten added, although there is a popular line of books where many of the recipes include it.

Poke around online. The bread forum has some very solid recipes.

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Yeah I know it was a little broad and you know it was and still is as good a question I can come up with. I am not one to spend much time in the kitchen unless cooking a steak or something. This whole foray into making bread has flat out kicked my butt but I am going to persevere and master the damn thing one way or another.

I am not a fan of wheat beers but I do love cracked wheat for breakfast. Looks like I got about a lifetime supply of breakfast now LOL

The nice thing about baking is that you get to sample the results a lot sooner. Try this recipe to get started.

ong said:

Why would you need to add gluten? Homeground whole-wheat flour has plenty of gluten in it. It's just a lot heavier because of all the bran and germ.

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You could remove the gran and germ I guess. Let me know when figure out a good way to do that.


I've been making bread with 100% homeground wheat since the early 1980's. I have never had the dough rise well without adding something to it. That something is either store purchased flour or wheat gluten. Using 100% my own ground flour makes for a VERY dense loaf of bread. Tasty but dense.

I'm always open to learning and constantly looking for ways to improve my techniques though so if anyone has some, I'm all ears.

pnj said:

You could remove the gran and germ I guess. Let me know when figure out a good way to do that.

I've been making bread with 100% homeground wheat since the early 1980's. I have never had the dough rise well without adding something to it. That something is either store purchased flour or wheat gluten. Using 100% my own ground flour makes for a VERY dense loaf of bread. Tasty but dense.

I'm always open to learning and constantly looking for ways to improve my techniques though so if anyone has some, I'm all ears.

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Sorry, didn't mean to sound snippy. Just interested in the chemistry -- since hard wheats, especially, already have plenty of gluten, not sure why you'd need more, or why exactly that would trap more co2. I do a lot of whole wheat breads, but usually with a sponge/starter -- maybe that helps leaven?

Boil wheat berries until soft and add spices. Kinda acts like rice or risotto. If you add some maple syrup, then it really tastes great. But this assumes you have un-milled wheat.

My experience with WW bread is that a sourdough starter works really well. (the sour acts as an enzyme to soften the wheat?) But a major component to leaven whole wheat has been adding sugar and keeping the dough really moist. Again, just my experience, no actual science behind it.

or just make lots of wheat beer.

ong- I didn't want to sound like a know it all, cause I do not. I just know what i've seen work/not work for many years.

You say you're making whole wheat bread but are you grinding the wheat yourself? If I use store bought whole wheat four I get different results.

I once made a few different loafs using exact measurements, only changing/adding Vital Wheat Gluten. the more gluten I added, the better my bread would rise.

Hey pnj - You make an awesome point. There's a big variance when you factor in the kind of wheat and fineness of the flour. I've never had particularly good luck with store bought WW, but I wonder if that's b/c it was something lower in protein, thus requiring vital gluten. I just recently switched to hard red with a coarse grind, but it probably behaves vastly different from you homemilled product.

But kudos for doing a side by side experiment! I'm definitely going to need to look into that.

I do grind it myself and today I am going to try a mix of half white and half red:rockin:

Heres hoping for the best

Well I went all white this time and it turned out good. Downright tasty even:rockin:

pnj said:

ong- I didn't want to sound like a know it all, cause I do not. I just know what i've seen work/not work for many years.

You say you're making whole wheat bread but are you grinding the wheat yourself? If I use store bought whole wheat four I get different results.

I once made a few different loafs using exact measurements, only changing/adding Vital Wheat Gluten. the more gluten I added, the better my bread would rise.

Click to expand...

Hmm. No, I've just used store bought WW flour. Maybe I'll try throwing some wheat berries in my Corona and see what happens!