This is How we Roll

I have long been wanting to get to this subject - the processing of grain directly before eating. There is one grain so soft that you don't have to boil or grind it to make it edible, and that is the oat. And our past garden manager at Ecology Action has the perfect oat tool: a roller.

Industrially speaking, there are vast machines that do this task, putting millions of round cardboard tubes full of stale rolled oats in thousands of grocery stores, but this is different. It fits on your countertop and can be put away in a drawer or cabinet when you are done. It doesn't take a mechanic to service it, and doesn't require anything but your own arms to power it. And it allows you to have fresh rolled oats every day.
For a house-warming gift when we moved to the Golden Rule, Carol got us one, and we have been loving it. It works like this: You pour some oats in the hopper, turn the crank, and the oats get squished by two rollers, landing in the hopper below. When you finish, you brush the rollers off and put it away. Simple and effective.
Of course, it doesn't have to stop there. Margo, being the adventurous spirit she is, postulated that, by soaking other grains we might make them soft enough to roll. So we tried it with barley, triticale, rye, and probably wheat. As you see from the photos, we made it quite a process of soaking and laying out to dry a little, then rolling. All that we eventually found was necessary was putting them in a jar with water at the rate of ¾ cups grain to 1 tablespoon water. Letting them sit over night will soften them sufficiently to roll, then you go for it!
Where does one get this magic tool? The same place we get many other great magic tools: the Lehman's Catalog. It's where you can find the next topic of conversation, too.
Not long after arriving at Ecology Action my attention was drawn to the funny contraption in the corner of the cooking area. White enamel, a pedestal, a wheel and a crank. A hand-powered grain mill, specifically the Country Living Grain Mill, which makes all dreams come true. Soon after uncovering it we were grinding all of our grains fresh for bread, biscuits, tortillas, cookies, cakes, polenta, all that stuff. It takes elbow grease, it's true, but after a few months of using that every time you need flour, it gets much easier. For three loaves of bread I would grind 16 cups of flour once a week or so. We'd put it through twice for a finer grind, and that would mean 40 minutes of work, which I could do continuously by the time we left.
Upon moving down here we started using the available mill, which is called the "Magic Mill". For pictures and a great explanation you can check out this blog on food storage. The long and short is that it takes half the time and infinitely less physical work, but the stones don't get as close so you don't have as fine a flour (unless you sift it). Plus you don't have the satisfaction of doing it yourself. And no, I'm not being sarcastic.
I came up with a few methods of making the hand-mill easier, which ended up being a lot more work to figure out and much less helpful than just buckling down and doing it - one involved taking a hacksaw to a child's bicycle. I bet it would have been better if I knew how to weld...
One might ask, why bother when you can buy flour at the store? The short answer is that we like bothering. The longer answer, from which I will not spare you, involves simple seed anatomy. All seeds, grain included, come with a fibery husk, which surrounds and protects a big starchy endosperm and a small germ. The germ is the embryo of the plant, and the starch is the energy to help that plant develop. Which part is most devoid of vitamins and minerals, do you suppose? Now hold that thought.
The germ contains, among other things, oils, and oils that are stored correctly keep from going rancid. One of the incorrect ways of storing oils is mixing them up in flour and putting them on a shelf for weeks, months, or years. On the other hand, that is a great way to get rancid oil that makes your flour taste bad.
In the early half of the 1900's industry came up with the roller mill, which enabled them to pulverize the endosperm while sifting out the husk (bran) and the germ. Also known as the fiber and the minerals. The end result is a beautiful but nutritionally bereft white powder, which is then further bleached and then enriched. All the oils (in the germ) have been removed, and can be sold separately, like the bran, to consumers. Nice for the seller, and convenient for the buyer. But not good for the buyer, since the bread now lacks all that fiber (as well as its indigenous vitamins and minerals). Sound like colon trouble?
So we cut to the chase, growing some grain and buying the rest bulk in 25 or 50 pound bags from the local health food store. That gives us the nutrition in an easily stored form, and saves us a lot of money. It has been an educational and satisfying transition.