How to Grind Wheat from the Little House books
When The Long Winter hit, De Smet was running low on food and it was unsure if a train would be able to make it through soon. Pa was lucky enough to buy the last bag of seed wheat from the Wilder Boys (Almanzo and Royal), but the wheat was not edible as is. Laura and her family had to grind wheat by hand in The Long Winter, using their coffee mill, in order to have wheat to make bread each day so they could survive through the long winter.
Supplies:
Note: Before starting, remember it took the Ingalls all day to grind just enough flour to make one loaf of bread. You will probably want to do this over several weeks, carefully saving the ground wheat in a sealed container, or use an electric grinder after you experience grinding some by hand.
- Put in enough wheat to fill the hopper at the top. Hold tightly onto the mill, or have someone else hold it for you. You may want to grind the wheat sitting on the floor.
- Turn the handle to grind. You may need an adult to start it for you, as unground wheat is very hard to grind. Continue to grind until all the wheat has gone through the grinder.
- Pull out the drawer in the bottom of the mill. If it does not look fine enough to use for baking bread, return it to the top of the hopper and grind again.
- When you finally have enough ground wheat, you can make bread.
Many cookbooks, including The Little House Cookbook, contain bread recipes you can try. Enjoy!
From The Long Winter
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I like this coffee grinder because it is a hand crank, so similar to what Laura had to do, and it has a safety cover on the top.
- FINE OR COARSE GROUND COFFEE SETTING---With adjustable grind control, the manual coffee grinder can help you to get fine or coarse coffee powder, so that you can easily enjoy Espresso ,French Press,Pour Over, Drip, French Press, Cold Brew, Percolator, Turkish.
- TWO 5.5 oz CLEAR GLASS JARS---The manual coffee grinder comes with two 5.5 oz clear glass jars, which can hold fresh ground coffee or beans during traveling or camping, convenient to carry, also act well as decorating containers
- CONSISTENT GRINDS---- Fresh grinds should be consistent in texture and uniform in size for the specific brew method.With lengthening handle, the manual coffee grinder can save you effort when grinding beans. Blade grinders indiscriminately chops beans versus our manual coffee grinder with conical burr will consistently grind beans to the desired coarseness.
- ORIGINAL COFFEE FLAVOR MAINTAINED---Durable ceramic burr will not add heat during grinding, and will not damage the original flavor of coffee, better to grind beans before you brew coffee, best choice for coffee lovers
- EASY TO CLEAN---The coffee mill, removable handle and lid disassembles easily, all parts of the manual coffee grinder are washable, easy to clean thoroughly to make coffee of better scent
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