Worn Paths: Vitamix: Grind Flour at Home in About a Minute

This week one car was in the shop, leaving the main grocery getter (and cook) without motorized transportation during the day. By not being able to run errands that involved a significant distance I was able to slow down and do a few projects at home. Some of those projects were born out necessity, owing to the fact that there was no mid-week grocery store trip.

All of the bread we consume in our house, including the pizza crust for Pizza Fridays, is homemade. This week I baked the usual amount of bread, steadily emptying the flour bin. As I used the last of the King Arthur flour on Thursday night for a loaf of bread, I wondered if I would need to make a trip to the neighborhood grocer for Friday's pizza. Though it's not ideal, I would be okay with that. Fortunately, I remembered a recent purchase of hard red winter wheat berries that were stored in the freezer. I bought them with the idea that I would experiment grinding them into flour in our Vitamix.

To grind whole grain into flour using a Vitamix:

-Use the dry blade container and tamper if you have them. The tamper will help the grains circulate as they grind and not get caught up in the blades.

-Place 2 cups whole grains into the Vitamix.

-Turn on the blender for 1 minute or less. Blending for longer times may cause your machine and flour to overheat or your flour to become a hard mass stuck to the inside of your blender. I blended for 50 seconds, because I was happy with how fine the flour was.

-To grind into a finer flour you could wait for the machine and flour to cool before re-blending. Take the container off the base and stir the flour to speed the cooling process and clear the flour away from the blades somewhat, to reduce the likelihood the flour will pack down around the blades.

-Remember to not overwork and overheat your blender!