How I Make Cheap 'Oat Flour' With Whole Oats

by Texas Homesteader ~
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I often replace some of (or sometimes ALL of) the whole-wheat flour in my bread recipes with oat flour. But I don’t BUY oat flour, I make it myself.

Oat flour contains the healthy properties of whole oats. And by making it myself it’s cheap too. Don’t worry, it’s not hard nor does it require high-dollar equipment. I use bulk oats and a coffee grinder, y’all.

You’re not gonna believe how easy this is.

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Experimenting With Whole Wheat Flour Ratios

I’ve experimented with sandwich bread recipes for several years. I preferred whole-wheat bread for the health aspect as well as the heartier bite of it.

But I’d not been pleased with bread made completely with whole wheat flour. It was just too dry for our tastes.

So I started mixing different ratios of all purpose and whole wheat flour for RancherMan’s Sandwich Bread to get the best of both worlds.

But whole wheat flour is more expensive in our area. And I figured oatmeal’s healthy, right??

So I decided to offset a portion of whole wheat flour by using whole oats ground into flour when I make my Oatmeal Sandwich Bread or my Honey/Oat Bread Machine Recipe.

We loved it. It still had the hearty feel that whole wheat offers, but cheaper!

Oats Purchased In Bulk

I buy whole oats in the huge 25-lb paper bag from a store that sells in bulk. I’ve found it’s often cheaper buying in bulk. And I love that it’s sold in a paper bag that just gets shredded and added to my Compost.

When I get that big bag home I repackage the oats into lidded 2 to 5-gallon food-grade buckets and store it in my pantry.

Making Oat Flour In Seconds

When I need oat flour I’ll bring out my favorite *Cuisinart Grind Central coffee grinder. I bought it years ago because it grinds a full cup of whole oats at a time into the coarse oat flour I want.

And it only takes a few seconds. So this coffee grinder is restricted to oat-flour duty only!

I put a cup of oats into my grinder, whir it for a few seconds and BOOM! Oat flour!

Now I’m ready to include it in my handsome RancherMan’s favorite sandwich bread recipe. It gives my bread the same hearty feel as the 100% whole wheat flour did.

How Much Oat Flour To Use?

Of course I’d be wary of replacing too much wheat-based flour with the oat-based flour, as I’d think it would change the bread too drastically. So I still have a portion of all purpose flour in my bread recipe.

But I typically replace all of the whole wheat portion with my oat flour. I’ve got plenty of oats, so why not??

So far we’ve been pretty pleased with the substitution of the whole-wheat portion in my recipes. 🙂

Of course the longer you whir the oats the finer the ‘flour’ becomes. But I prefer it about as coarse as the photo at the top of this post because I enjoy the texture of it in our bread.

But if you like a finer texture you can whir it longer, or even sift through a mesh sieve it after it’s ground. Whatever you like!

~TxH~

Other Favorite Breads

All Bread Posts

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Working To Provide For Ourselves On Our Texas Homestead

How I Make Cheap ‘Oat Flour’ With Whole Oats