Should You Mill Your Own Flour?

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Spring of was a crazy time. Well, actually, itself was a mess. But spring, in particular, had me on edge.

Utah had several minor earthquakes. The Covid pandemic resulted in a lot of panic shopping, so certain basic items were scarce. And the stock market crashed. Although the crash, didn&#;t affect my family directly, it did contribute to the overall air of unease. It made me worried about the economy and if our finances would be able to absorb the hit.

And then the stimulus checks came.

Like many other families, my husband and I used the money to cover expenses. We paid some of our credit card debt. We stocked up on essential food items. And we put some money into savings in case my husband lost his job.

But with some of the extra money, I also bought an at-home mill, more specifically a Wondermill Grain Grinder. I figured the mill would come in handy for a variety of reasons.

3 Reasons to Mill Your Own Flour

Before I delve too deep into the nitty gritty of grinding wheat, I want you to know that a mill isn&#;t the right solution for everyone. Mills can be expensive, noisy, and messy. Some mills have a learning curve. Home-ground flours don&#;t have the same consistency as store-bought flours. Depending on where you live, wheat berries and other grains may be more difficult to purchase, and therefore, more expensive.

However, if you still wonder whether you should mill your own flour, here are a few pros to consider.

1. You Can Store Grain in Bulk for Emergencies

During the first few weeks of the pandemic, many store shelves ran out of flour. Although Walmart and Smith&#;s tried to stay on top of stocking supplies, panic buyers kept clearing them out again.

Fortunately, my local Costco also had several buckets of wheat. I bought a 45 lb. bucket of hard white wheat for about $15. With my newly purchased mill, I could make my own wheat flour even when the stores had run out.

Better still, I didn&#;t have to mill all my wheat at once. I only had to mill what I needed for the next few weeks and store the rest. According to the container, the wheat berries could last 30 years if stored in a cool, dry place.

Now, I can make flour at my leisure, and during an emergency, I can skip going to the store. If you like to feel prepared, you should mill your own flour.

2. You Can Skip the Preservatives and Additives

I&#;m going to be up front about myself right now: I&#;m cheap.

For most of my day-to-day baking, I stock up on Great Value&#;s All-Purpose Flour. It&#;s easy to buy in bulk, and most of the time, it&#;s available for only $0.22 a pound. It might not be flashy, but it gets the job done and keeps my family fed.

However, like so many other store-brand flours, Great Value&#;s all-purpose flour comes &#;enriched&#; and &#;bleached.&#;

• Enriched &#; During processing, some nutrients are lost. If your flour comes enriched, it means those nutrients are replaced.
• Bleached &#; Bleached flour includes whitening agents, maturing agents, or both.

While these additives are harmless, they can affect the flavor and smell of the flour. You can bake the flour to improve the odor, but if you want a better flavor experience, you&#;ll need a higher quality flour. And higher quality costs money.

Or you can skip the additives and mill your own flour.

When you mill your own flour, you use the entire berry or grain, so none of the nutrition is lost. Additionally, you don&#;t need to make your flour look blindingly white through bleaching agents. You have great tasting flour from start to finish. Better still, you don&#;t have to worry about what manufacturers have done to keep it on the shelf longer.

3. You Can Experiment With More Grains

My local Walmart has a limited variety of flour. I can choose between all-purpose or whole wheat. Occasionally, I&#;ll see some bread flour or some cake flour, but they often cost more than I&#;m willing to pay.

If I feel like making one of my rye bread recipes, I&#;d have to go to a specialty store. If I need rice flour to keep dough from sticking or to make gluten-free bread, I&#;m out of luck. I could buy barley flour or spelt flour from Amazon, but, as I mentioned earlier, I&#;m cheap. Specialty flours cost two to three times as much as simple flours. Even worse, I&#;d have to cover the cost of shipping them to my house as well.

But with a mill, I have a much wider variety of flours (and subsequently, flavors) to use in my baking.

If I ship from Amazon, a bag of rye flour can cost $0.37 an ounce whereas a bag of rye berries only costs $0.14 an ounce, so milling my own flour cuts the cost to a more reasonable amount. Similarly, a bag of barley flour can cost about $0.54 an ounce, while a bag of pearl barley costs about $0.23 an ounce.

With grains and berries at half the price of their corresponding flours, I feel much more comfortable mixing, matching, blending, and experimenting with my bread recipes. And I can do it while staying within my budget.

If you like to experiment with flavor profiles, you should mill your own flour.

Do You Save Money?

I&#;m all about saving money wherever I can, and I&#;m going to answer this question as thoroughly and honestly as I can.

If you want the short answer: yes, you can save money.

Want the longer answer? You can save money, but it will take a while to break even, and you&#;ll need to think carefully about what you buy.

If you mill your own flour, you&#;ll need to keep in mind the following:

• The cost of your mill
• The cost of your grain
• The cost of electricity
• The cost of shipping

You may also want to consider storage space, how often you bake bread, and how much time and energy you want to use when you mill your own flour.

A Closer Look at Mills

First, let&#;s take a look at some of the more popular mills on the market.

Of course, there are a lot more mills available than these three. Feel free to shop around and see what&#;s out there.

I am am Amazon associate, so I do earn money from affiliate links. However, I don&#;t earn money for my opinions, and I only list this product here as an example of a popular mill.

A Manual Grinder

If you want the cheapest option possible, you can buy a generic brand manual grain grinder from Walmart or from Amazon or from a similar store near you. A manual grain grinder is a good option if you want to have a way to grind wheat during an emergency and you don&#;t have access to electricity. It takes up little space, and you can just clamp it onto your table top and get to work.

But a manual grain grinder doesn&#;t make fine flour. You may run your wheat through the grinder multiple times and will still end up with some crunchier bits that will affect the texture of your bread. Additionally, manual grain grinders take a lot of muscle power. You may mill your own flour at your own speed, but you&#;ll wear yourself out for a few cups of gritty flour.

A Grinding Attachment

If you want the next cheapest option, you can buy a wheat grinder attachment for $150 at multiple locations. I&#;ve seen these in several stores, and they&#;re all about the same price. You can attach the grinder to the front of your KitchenAid mixer and work from there. It&#;s also fairly small, and it has multiple settings so you can choose how fine you want your flour.

However, this attachment only works if you already have a powerful KitchenAid mixer, which can cost $250 or more. If you don&#;t already have a KitchenAid, you&#;re looking at a $400+ purchase altogether, making it the most expensive option. Additionally, many KitchenAid attachment users warn that the attachment shouldn&#;t pair with the smaller artisan mixers, as it could blow out the motor. The attachment gets hot after use, so if you plan to make more than 10 cups of flour at a time, you might need a more efficient option.

An Electric Grinder

And now a look at the third option, the Wondermill. This is the mill I chose as an amateur baker. It was available at a few smaller sites, and those sites did run out of stock about the same time flour became scarce during the pandemic. However, they did a great job restocking, and it&#;s available again. The mill itself works quickly. It can easily grind 12 cups of flour in a matter of minutes, and the flour goes into a covered bowl attachment to keep messes minimal.

But you should know the mill only has three milling options for flour: coarse, bread, and pastry. And I have noticed that if you don&#;t completely lock the lid into place on the flour bowl that flour will poof out into a powdery mess during milling. The mill handles a variety of grains fine, including rice, wheat, and rye. However, do not try to make almond flour with the mill, as the oils will gunk up the system.

Additionally, advertisers claim you can store your freshly milled flour in the covered container, but there is an open hole where it attaches to the mill. If you have a problem with insects in your house, you&#;ll want an alternative storage solution for when you mill your own flour.

Of course, these are just a few popular milling options. You might find a better deal elsewhere, but be sure to read reviews and thoroughly understand the pros and cons of each before you invest.

A Closer Look at the Math

This is the part where I do math. I&#;m not great at mathematics, so feel free to correct me or point out any errors in my reasoning here. However, I think it&#;s important to crunch some numbers before giving a hard and fast &#;yes&#; on whether you should mill your own flour.

If you read my &#;experiment with grains section earlier&#;, you&#;d see that you can save about $0.23 an ounce if you buy rye berries rather than rye flour. And you can save about $0.31 an ounce if you buy pearl barley rather than barley flour.

But let&#;s take a look at regular wheat flour, the cheapest and most common flour to mill.

The Cost of Wheat

I purchased a 45 lb. bucket of hard white wheat for $15 at Costco. At that price, wheat totals about $0.33 a pound or $0.02 an ounce. I understand that in some locations, you might not find wheat in bulk for that price, but I&#;m working with what I have access to right now.

Additionally, a cup of wheat berries actually makes more than a cup of wheat flour. In general, a cup of wheat berries makes closer to a cup and a half of wheat flour, taking the price per ounce down even further.

To break it down, 45 pounds = 720 ounces. A cup of wheat berries weighs 6.3 ounces, which means a Costco bucket holds about 114 cups of wheat berries. If a cup of wheat berries makes a cup and a half of flour, then a bucket makes 171 cups cups of wheat flour (plus a little extra).

A cup of flour weighs 4.5 ounces, so a bucket would make about 771 ounces of flour for $15, bringing the price to about $0.31 a pound or $0.019 an ounce.

Keep in mind that this is for pure whole wheat flour, not all-purpose flour (which requires additional sifting to imitate). I have yet to see a Great Value brand whole wheat flour, so let&#;s compare it with the Wheat Montana Bronze Chief Whole Wheat flour, as that is the current budget pick at $0.05 an ounce.

If you mill your own whole wheat flour, you&#;d save $0.03 an ounce or $0.49 a pound. Note that this does NOT include the cost of shipping, taxes, or electricity, which I have no idea how to calculate at this point.

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How Long Until You Break Even?

To continue my hypothetical, you&#;d have to mill 530 pounds of flour to break even (if you purchased the Wondermill at $260). Assuming my math is still in the right ball park at this point, you&#;d need to mill 1,886 cups of flour.

I know bread recipes and amounts vary widely, but let&#;s assume that the average loaf of whole wheat bread contains about 3.5 cups of flour. You&#;d need to make 539 loaves of bread before you recoup the cost of your mill.

If you only made about a loaf of whole wheat bread a week, it would take you 10 years to break even. So, not exactly promising if you are a casual baker.

However, I tend to make at least two loaves a week (more if I&#;m trying to master a recipe or if I&#;m feeling generous and want to gift bread to friends). At two loaves a week, I&#;ll still need 5 years of casual baking before I start to save money on flour, not including the cost of shipping, taxes, and electricity. According to the manufacturers, the Wondermill has a lifetime warranty on milling heads and only a 6 year warranty on everything else.

Is a Mill a Good Investment?

I understand that this has been a lengthy post, and I totally get it if you&#;d rather not read everything in depth. So here&#;s a quick recap.

If you want to mill your own flour, you have a mix of pros and the cons. In favor of milling, you can make flour at your own leisure, enjoy better flavor and nutrition from your flours, and experiment with a variety of grain. Ounce to ounce, home-milled flour tends to be cheaper than store-bought flour, so you have the potential to save money.

However, don&#;t forget that mills can cost quite a lot. If you are a casual baker on a tight budget, you&#;ll need to carefully consider whether you can foot the bill upfront and whether you want to wait five years (or more) before you see any real savings. In some locations, finding flour on the shelves may actually be cheaper than shipping grains to your home or buying them at a specialty store.

Despite the cons, I love milling my own flour at home, and I think the purchase was a good investment for me personally. But be sure to weigh all the pros and cons before you purchase a mill to mill your own flour.

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While milling fresh flour at home has been around for quite a long time, it&#;s become more popular in recent years. I was introduced to fresh ground flour close to 15 years ago, but as a single mom with three kids, the start-up costs were prohibitive. I have always cooked from scratch, knowing that homemade food is more nutritious. However as a young cook, I never considered the quality of the ingredients I used in my home cooking. As we become more aware of the quality of our food, including artificial ingredients, we choose to do better. While there are pros and cons to using fresh ground grains, is fresh ground flour cheaper? 

Fresh Ground Flour Versus Store Bought Flour

The number one reason to use fresh ground flour is nutrition. When using whole grain flour, you reap the full benefits of the nutrients in the entire wheat berry. 

Parts of a Wheat Berry

Whole grains have three parts: the bran, the germ, and the endosperm.

• The bran is the hard outer shell of the wheat berry. It contains vitamin B and other minerals.  It is rich in fiber.  
• The germ is the part of the seed where a new plant would develop if planted. It contains vitamin E and essential fatty acids.
• The endosperm is full of carbohydrates and proteins that fuel a growing plant.  

The bran of the wheat berry is the perfect means to preserve the wheat. Once the bran is broken, or ground, the whole wheat flour begins to degrade through oxidization. Fresh ground flour is most nutrient-dense when it&#;s used in its entirety. Some home cooks prefer to sift the bran out of their fresh ground flour. This creates flour with a texture more like store-bought flour. However, sifting removes the vital nutrients that the bran provides, and technically speaking means that it is no longer whole-grain flour.

Shockingly 40 to 45% of the wheat&#;s nutrients are lost within the first 24 hours after grinding.  If used right away, those nutrients are locked in through the cooking process. Three days after milling, over 95% of the essential nutrients are lost through oxidation.  This means that pre-ground flour, even if it&#;s whole wheat flour has already lost vital nutrients before you even purchase it.

Commercial Flour

Conventional store-bought flour is highly processed. The bran and germ are removed to give it a longer shelf life and produce a softer product. Unfortunately this strips away most of the health benefits of wheat. The producers of commercial all-purpose flour recognize the nutrients lost and compensate by producing enriched flour. Synthetic nutrients are added back to enriched flour to compensate for the nutrients stripped from the wheat. The bran and germ are sold separately as grain products. I wrote an entire post about flour that explains some of the common terms regarding types of commercial flour. 

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Everything you need to know to get started using fresh ground flour!

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Cost Breakdown: Is Fresh Ground Flour Cheaper?

Now let&#;s talk about cost. Is it more cost-efficient to grind your own flour? When measured by weight, a cup of wheat berries is equal to a cup of flour. However most cooks don&#;t measure by weight, we measure by volume. In the case of volume, a cup of wheat berries is not equal to a cup of flour. The exact conversion from wheat berries to flour varies widely. Some sources state that 1 cup of wheat berries makes as little as 1 1/3 cups of flour. While others state that 1 cup of wheat berries makes as much as 1 3/4 cups of flour.

A side by side comparison. 1 cup of hard white wheat berries on the left. 1 cup of ground hard white wheat berries on the right.

For myself, I need easy figuring. I stick to the general rule that 1 cup of wheat berries equals 1 1/2 cups of flour.  I grind just a bit more than I need to make sure I have enough. Any extra, I store it in the refrigerator, or freezer which slows the oxidation process. The extra is always useful for making a quick roux, or feeding my sourdough starter!

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Cost Break Down for 5 Pounds of Fresh Ground Flour

While wheat berries can be purchased from a variety of sources, I purchase my organic wheat berries from Azure Standard. Currently, at the time of the publishing of this post, 50 pounds of organic hard white wheat berries is $64.52. Which is $1.28 a pound for wheat berries. 

To make a realistic comparison, we need to compare apples to apples. Let&#;s break this down per 5 pounds of flour. 

• Five pounds of commercial flour contains approximately 18 cups of flour. Based on my 1 1/2 cups of flour per cup of wheat berries, we need 12 cups of wheat berries per 5 pounds of flour. (18 divided by 1.5=12)

• There are 2 1/2 cups of wheat berries in every pound so 12 cups of wheat berries is 4.8 pounds of wheat berries. (12 divided by 2.5= 4.8) Are you still with me? 

• This gives me a cost per 5 pounds of fresh ground, whole wheat flour to be $6.14. (4.8 x $1.28=$6.14)

The Cost of Whole Wheat Flour

Remember, we need to compare apples to apples.  A 5-pound bag of organic whole white wheat flour from Azure Standard is $9.95 a bag ($1.99 a pound).  For giggles, I searched organic whole wheat flour prices on Amazon and got a range of prices, King Arthur Organic Whole Wheat Flour is $19.81 for a 5-pound bag! Bob&#;s Red Mill Organic Whole Wheat Flour is $16.98 for a 5-pound bag. 

Places like Azure Standard sell ground flour in bulk. A 50-pound bag of organic whole white wheat flour is $75.95 ($1.52 per pound). However, this goes back to the nutrients lost, even if you properly store the flour in the freezer, the natural vitamins were lost 72 hours after it was ground long before you purchased it. 

One of the best perks of grinding your own flour is the variety of grains you can use. Experiment with ancient grains or mixing grains to produce different flavor profiles.  Consider grinding gluten-free flours, the sky is the limit!

Additional Cost of Using Fresh Ground Flour

While we can see that in an apples-to-apples comparison, the savings per bag of flour is certainly significant, grinding your flour at home has additional expenses. The biggest expense is a home flour mill.  There are many options on the market for an electric mill. I love my Nutrimill Harvest Grain Mill! My grain mill is a stone burr mill. Not only can I grind fine flour, but I also have the option to change the settings to grind more coarse grains for things like cream of wheat, grits, or cornmeal. Some may even prefer using a manual grain mill in case of power outages.

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Depending on your family size, a large family may need an impact mill that can grind larger amounts of fine flour much faster. However, impact mills are more limited if you want to grind more than just flour.  They are not as adjustable as a burr mill. Read more about grain mills in this post. 

Grain mills range in price from $199 to $ depending on the features that are most important to you. While a grain mill is a significant investment, it is a one-time purchase. Some people use a coffee grinder, food processor, or high-powered blender with varied success. While all of these options will grind the wheat berries to coarse flour, the extra cost of a wheat mill can make a huge difference when it comes to making fine homemade flour. This could have a significant impact on your success rate and satisfaction level of your baked goods.

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Shipping Cost

One of the biggest considerations regarding wheat berries is shipping costs. When I first began to mill my own flour, I ordered my grains from Amazon to take advantage of free shipping options. Buying clubs can be a good option if you can find the wheat berries.  Bread Becker Coop was a more cost-efficient shipping option for me when I lived close to a drop location. When we moved I made the switch to Azure Standard. While both have a similar selection of grains, the more frequent drops made it easier to budget my grains rather than having to place a large order all at once. Both Bread Becker Coop and Azure Standard have very low shipping costs which makes them the best option for me. 

&#;Time and Energy Necessary for Fresh Ground Flour

The other consideration is your own time and energy costs.  Grinding flour in itself just takes a few minutes and uses a minimal amount of power.  However, I found the learning curve regarding using fresh ground flour to be more significant than I anticipated. As an experienced baker for almost four decades, it&#;s like learning an entire new skill! Baking with fresh flour can&#;t be compared to baking with white flour. They aren&#;t the same product and it can be challenging to get used to the differences. My husband has eaten his share of heavy, dense breads and flat cookies! Still, once you get the hang of it, the taste and smell of homemade bread can&#;t be beat! 

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Consider Your Why

If you are considering a grain mill, think about the main reasons you want to mill your own flour. My main reason for getting a grain mill was from a preparedness standpoint. Whole wheat berries are the best option for long-term storage. was the first time in my life I had ever seen empty grocery store shelves. Should that ever happen again, I wanted to be ready! 

I was a single mom for 13 years raising three kids. I completely understand living on a tight budget and not having options.  As a young mom, I had friends who ground flour.  But considering I could buy flour with the traditional blue and gold label for a much cheaper price, I just couldn&#;t justify the added expense. Even today, that same blue and gold-labeled flour is about $3.99 for a 5-pound bag of flour. Sometimes, getting food on the table means I do the best I can with what I have and I honestly didn&#;t realize the significant difference in the quality of the foods I baked. I thought that fresh bread made with any kind of flour was good enough, which sadly is not the case at all.    

When you Know Better, Do Better!

The good news is you know better! While it&#;s a good idea to buy new when you can, a good option to consider is a refurbished mill. You may even get lucky and find a used one as a much cheaper option. Possibly it&#;s a goal you have to aim for. Choose the best grain mill you can afford and save your hard-earned dough for it (pun intended). Fresh ground flour is the cheapest option when compared to quality whole wheat flour and is significantly better for you. The equipment and time invested is worth the sacrifice for you and your family.

Not convinced? This is a good read to learn more.

About the Author: Barbra-Sue Kowalski grew up on a small hobby farm. She was always drawn to farm life, however, she was stuck in an urban life far from her roots. Barbra-Sue was a single mom for 13 years, raising her 3 children on her own. She met Philip in and they married in . Between the two of them, they have 5 grown children and 5 grandchildren. These empty nesters are following their dreams! As they both turn 50, they are building their off-grid homestead to live the life that they dream about. Learn more about Philip and Barbra-Sue here. Contact them here. To leave a comment on this post, please scroll down.

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