#42 – How To Get (& Grind) The Best Flour For Bread

“Find a supplier of as locally sourced grains as possible…find a mill; a coop and support them!”

If you’re a bread-maker, this episode’s for you.

We welcome back the fabulous Elly from Elly’s Everyday to the podcast to talk about the heart of bread, its raw material: grains and flour.

During this episode you’ll hear Elly’s wisdom on:

• Sourcing grains and flour for bread
• Grinding grains into flour at home, including why you would want to do it and how Elly grinds hers
• The vital difference between the two ways flours are produced: stone-grinding and roller milling
• Why and how Elly freezes her grains and what you must remember when defrosting
• How to get the best possible flour even when you can’t afford a home-mill
• And Elly talks us through her whole grain process – from choosing and buying through to mixing the dough.

Elly has two hugely popular YouTube channels and has helped thousands of people with making wholegrain sourdough, we’re so grateful to her for bringing us her wisdom!

The Run Down:

6:20 Where Elly sources her grains

11.20 Why Elly grinds grains at home for sourdough and what the benefits are

“When you freshly grind, you really can tell the difference!”

17.40 Elly’s home stone mill and how it works

19.50 The differences between Alison’s and Elly’s mills

21.50 The difference between roller-milled and stone-ground flour

27.30 The grains (and legumes) Elly uses

33.40 Elly’s whole process, start to finish

“I freezer-treat all my grains”

38.00 Alison’s weevil attack and how someone with a small freezer could freeze grains.

45.45 Freezing flour (listen here to hear *the* way to defrost too)

49.30 How long to do grains last and how does that differ from flour

53.10 Using freshly-milled flour for a sourdough starter

57.00 How to get the best possible flour when you’re on a budget

55.30 What Elly’s up to now on her YouTube channel

“It’s the detail that overwhelms people…I explain the things that matter; that really make a difference and the gloss over the rest.”

Resources:

If you’re thinking of purchasing a mill, Elly has discounts available! Check her page here for worldwide deals on Mockmills, Komo and bakeware.

Elly’s Everyday Wholegrain Sourdough YouTube channel

Elly’s website

Elly’s post about grain storage and weevils etc.

Elly’s video about grain storage at home

Elly’s latest ‘Mockmill update’ video

Our previous episode with Elly #10

Burrum Biodynamics (where Elly buys the majority of her grains and pulses) on Instagram

“I feel like I’m more connected to what’s happening on the farm…it’s more satisfying.”

Marie Tink’s Sourdough Baking in Australia facebook group

Paul Lebeau Germany on IG

Patrons can find the video of Elly grinding whole grains and mixing a dough on the private podcast feed & in the Treasure Trove. If you’d like to watch it and get loads more extra goodies, you can join us on Patreon at our companionship level here.

 

Transcript:

Alison:
If you’re a bread maker, this episode’s for you. We welcome back the fabulous Ellie from Ellie’s Every Day to the podcast to talk about the heart of bread, its raw material, grains and flour. During this episode, you’ll hear Ellie’s wisdom on sourcing grains and flour for bread, grinding grains into flour at home, including why you would want to do it and how Ellie grinds hers, The vital difference between the two ways flours are produced, stone grinding and roller milling, Why and how Ellie freezes her grains and what you must remember when defrosting them How to get the best possible flour even when you can’t afford a home mill And Ellie talks us through her whole grain process from choosing and buying through to mixing the dough, Ellie has two hugely popular YouTube channels and has helped thousands of people with making whole grain sourdough. We’re so grateful to her for bringing us her wisdom.

Alison:
Welcome to the Ancestral Kitchen podcast with Alison, a European town dweller in central Italy, and Andrea, living on a newly created family farm in northwest Washington State, USA. Pull up a chair at the table and join us as we talk about eating, cooking and living with ancient ancestral food wisdom in a modern world kitchen. Hello Andrea.

Andrea:
Hello Alison, how are you?

Alison:
I’m good and hello to our guest, Ellie.

Elly:
Hello, how are you two?

Andrea:
Hello.

Alison:
We’re good, three different time zones. It’s the middle of the night for me morning wise and the middle of the night for Andrea evening wise and we’ve got Ellie somewhere in the middle.

Elly:
Yeah, two o’clock in the afternoon. Perfect.

Andrea:
Nice. I’m the lucky one.

Alison:
We are so excited.

Elly:
You are, my friend.

Alison:
We are so excited to have Ellie back. Ellie is, if you don’t know, the creator of Ellie’s Every Day. She’s got two YouTube channels. One’s on sourdough bread. The other one’s on soap making. She is practical, no-nonsense, at-home sourdough, who’s brilliant and who has inspired thousands with all of her videos. Go and check out her channel. there are tons of them thank you she is a wealth of knowledge we’ve we’ve had her on here before we’ve had you on here before haven’t really yes it was back in july 2021 you can check it out it’s, quite a while ago. It’s a really good one too. This time though, it was, that was a general kind of sourdough chit chat. This time we’re focusing on the raw material. So the grains and the flour and in particular home milling, which Ellie, you do for all of your breads.

Elly:
I do, yes.

Alison:
So before we, before we jump into talking to you, I just want to say thank you to three new patrons who are supporting the podcast. You keep us going, literally. Thank Thank you ever so much, Alex Miller, Jonna Sutton and Monica Enfield. It’s wonderful. Jonna’s come on at the companionship level, so she’ll get access to lots of goodies, including our first live in-person session, which is coming up very soon.

Elly:
Yeah.

Alison:
So thank you. Okay, over to Ellie. So our first question, Ellie, I think we probably asked you this in our last interview as well. Yes. What did you last eat?

Elly:
Well, I last ate. It was lunch. It’s now 2 p.m., so I had some lunch. And I had some lentils. I was thinking of you because I know you love

Andrea:
Your lentils too, Alison.

Elly:
I had a pretty simple lunch. I cooked up some lentils this morning just with some onion and garlic and a bay leaf and a carrot and some celery. It’s just something we have as a pretty regular, simple thing. And I just had that with some toast, with some avocado on it. That was my lunch.

Alison:
Oh, what toast?

Elly:
Oh, toast, what toast? Well, it was a dough that I made. It was a bread that came out of a dough that I made on the weekend and half of it went to pizza and some of it went to bread. I think it was half spelt, half wheat, I think, pretty sure. Yeah, just a basic sourdough. Sounds good.

Alison:
And do you get particular lentils that you like? Because there are lots of different types of lentils.

Elly:
Yes, there are. I have tried lots and lots of different lentils in my life. I love Indian cooking and, you know, dal is a big thing that I’ve been a big fan of for a long time. But these days I’m fairly simple with my lentils. I really love whole red lentils. So, you know, the split red lentils that a lot of people use, the kind of orangey, pinky coloured ones. Well, I buy them in the whole form. They’re brown on the outside and they cook up just the same as regular brown or green lentils. And the reason why I use them is that the farm that I get my wheat and a lot of some of my other grains from, they also grow lentils. So I buy them from them because I know where they come from and it’s a really good farm that looks after the soil and I want to support them. So, yeah, those are my main lentils these days. I still sometimes get other lentils from different places just depending on who’s growing what and what I can get where and, yeah, you know what it’s like. You’re sort of always on the lookout for things, but mainly the red lentils are the main ones we use.

Alison:
It’s wonderful to hear that you’re able to get them from the same place that you get your grains. Yeah. And you know the stewardship that they’ve got around the land. That must feel good.

Elly:
And you probably know, you know, there’s really good reason for that too in terms of soil health because lentils are a nitrogen-fixing crop, so they rotate all of their fields between their grains and their lentils and they graze sheep, and so it’s all part of the… Part of the the balance of of keeping it all healthy so yeah and what’s

Alison:
The farm called let’s just give them a shout out i don’t know how many people might be near them but they sound wonderful.

Elly:
I’m yet to meet them i’m actually traveling down there next week in on the on the weekend which i’m so excited

Andrea:
About um their names

Elly:
Their names are steve and tanya walter and the farm or the The business is called Burrum Biodynamics, B-U-R-R-U-M, and they’re a Demeter Certified Biodynamic Farm in northwest Victoria, which is right in the southern part of Australia, which is quite a fair way south from me. But they are one of a number of farms in this country who are really taking seriously looking after the land and they don’t use any chemicals or anything. So it’s organic farming. They’re not certified organic. They use the biodynamic principles and follow all that methodology. And, yeah, they produce barley, oats, spelt, rye, wheat, lentils. Wow. Yeah, lots of different things.

Alison:
It’s going to be wonderful to go and see them. I know, yeah. And see some of the crops.

Elly:
Yeah, it’ll be great. Incredible.

Alison:
It’ll be great. Yeah. You have to let us know how that goes.

Elly:
Yeah, they seem like really lovely people. Their handle on Instagram is… Byron Biodynamics, I think. And, yeah, they post pretty regularly. They have a beautiful Kelpie dog called Barney who often gets on their post with the rainfall report.

Andrea:
You see little Barney on there. So, yeah, they just

Elly:
Seem like really nice people and they’re doing good things. Wonderful. Definitely support them if you can in Australia.

Alison:
Do you get all of your grains from them or not?

Elly:
At the moment, I think I do. No, not all, actually. I know that one of the questions that you had on your list was, you know, what grains do I use? And I guess I have a few core ones that I use regularly in my bread making, but I have a whole lot of others like millet and, you know, non-gluten, non-typical bread making grains that I use as well that come from different places. But most of my bread making grains do come from that farm at the moment. It depends, like I said, on who’s growing what. I get most of my grains through kind of a co-op, not-for-profit enterprise here in Brisbane who actually travel around and build relationships and source produce, pantry produce, from farms all over the country who are doing the right thing by the land and by the people that work with them and by everybody. So, yeah, I tend to get whatever they have available. I really trust their assessment process of how they source things. So, yeah, sometimes they have different things available from other farms. Like my brown rice, I get brown rice from a farm in northern New South Wales, which is a lot closer to us, and it’s all rain-fed brown rice. So it’s a particular variety that’s suited to this climate, doesn’t require any irrigation.

Elly:
So, yeah, different things come from different places. But at the moment, yeah, a lot of my red grains come from the Burrum farm.

Alison:
I think it’s lovely to hear, you know, that in your corner of the world, there is someone doing something really quite special. And it reassures me that, you know, wherever we are, it is possible to do some digging and find someone who is doing something, you know, really, really sound. And that makes me feel happy about what you’re doing.

Elly:
Yeah, absolutely.

Alison:
And I have to tell it, tell us.

Elly:
I was just going to say, and I have to thank you two for, I mean, it’s always been a part of my awareness, but I think, you know, after being introduced to what you two are doing in your podcast and you in particular, Alison, and talking with you has really raised my awareness even more about that. And I’m putting more effort into that than I once would have probably. So thank you for that. you know that’s really

Alison:
You can’t you can’t talk to me without me talking about that.

Elly:
No but it’s it’s great and it’s important and it I think it’s what you two are doing is is really helpful and you’re giving people more of a vocabulary to talk to talk about it with other people you know I’m a lot more confident to discuss these kinds of things with family members of mine who might not have any exposure to it or understanding of it and friends and And yeah, it all helps the more we can talk about it and kind of work it out as we go along, the better we all are, I think. So thank you.

Alison:
I agree. Okay, so let’s move on to an actual question. Tell us why you grind your own grains, because that’s what we’re going to be talking about for a lot of the podcast today, to make bread. And what are the benefits of grinding your own grains?

Elly:
Yeah, okay. I think when I pondered this question, and I probably

Andrea:
Shouldn’t have pondered it as much as I did, but the more I did,

Elly:
The more I realised how rich the response really is. And because of that, I’ll sort of try and keep it brief, but it’s a bit multifaceted. And I think the first thing that popped into my head was freshness and the health benefits of really having fresh milled grain so like lots of other you know fresh food products as soon as you cut something open or you grind it or you you know bash it up in some way you expose the inner parts of it inside the grain to oxygen and you know grains have whole grains have different parts and the oily part of the grain which is the germ which is like the embryo of the seed that contains natural, you know, as I said, it’s oily, it’s fatty. So once that’s ground, it does start to begin to oxidise as all fats and oils do, particularly seed or, you know, grain-based type, plant-based sort of oils. So when you’re grinding your own grain fresh, then you really can tell the difference in terms of how it smells and freshly milled grain has a real fresh aroma to it. You can really smell the oils and the bran and all the different parts of it. It just actually smells like…

Elly:
Oh, well, it smells like what you would imagine whole grains to smell like on the inside if you could just crack them open fresh. It has a really distinct kind of nutty aroma, obviously, depending on what grain it is. But, yeah, freshness is a really big part of it.

Elly:
Gosh, it’s a really big answer. I think aside from all of the sort of detailed things about what happens to grains when you store them or when you, compared to when you mill them fresh, the other thing I think that’s really important to me, which I hadn’t really thought of until I pondered this question was that for me, it’s really fun as well.

Andrea:
There’s actually a lot of joy in it.

Elly:
I really like being able to decide what type of bread I’m going to make, pull out my grains out of my cupboard and I can see them all. I feel like I’m closer to, I’m a bit more connected to what’s actually happening on the farm because I’m literally looking at the seed that they’ve produced for me to mill into flour to make my bread with. So it’s kind of more satisfying in that way and being able to mix and match and do different things. Obviously you can still do that with flour, but whole grains tend to store a lot better. You can store them for a lot longer, so it’s easier to have a bit more of a variety of grains if you want to than it is to have a variety of flours, I find anyway, depending on what storage capacity you have. But, yeah, it’s really fun and it’s a little adventure and it’s very… Satisfying in a sensory kind of a way just with all of the aromas and the flavors that you get from freshly milled grains. I guess it’s similar.

Alison:
It’s beautiful.

Elly:
I was thinking you’re trying to think of analogies and I think in the very first episode that I recorded with you about the sour dough I was talking about I gave some analogy about you know an apple when you cut an apple and you leave it on the bench it’s going to go brown it oxidizes. Yeah. Whole grains are the same Like lots of fresh foods, as soon as you take them out of their outer skin, they’re exposed to oxygen and they start to spoil, which is a natural decomposition process. So, you know, unless you’re doing something else to process them, to interrupt that or ferment, you know, let that go into a fermentation process, then, yeah, whole grains have that real beautiful freshness.

Alison:
What about the cost? Do you find it works out a lot cheaper or a little bit cheaper?

Elly:
Um it’s about the same for me yeah it’s about the same I tend to buy my grains in as bigger quantities as I can get them because the cost is lower um but yeah it’s about the same I can I can buy whole grains and whole grain flours for the same price all from the same suppliers they They sell virtually all of the cereal grain products in flour form and in grain form as well. So, yeah, I think it’s about the same.

Andrea:
When did you start milling your own flours?

Elly:
It was 2018. I started to learn a bit more about it. I had been making my own bread for a really long time. I think it’s over well over 20 years now and I used to always buy my whole wheat flours I was always into whole grain flour bread baking and I loved the idea of being able to mill my own grain for bread making but it just wasn’t something that was really accessible here I didn’t know anywhere that was really selling grain at the time and then somebody who I’ll also be catching up when I go down south next week Marie Tink who is the the person behind the Sourdough Bakers Australia support group on Facebook and she’s an amazing baker herself she got a meal and I really piqued my interest and I thought oh gosh she’s got one of these things and I started to learn more about it and I decided to get one so it was yeah about four years ago now

Alison:
So tell us about the mill that you use.

Elly:
Okay. The mill that I have, it’s called a, the model number is called a Mock Mill 200. And there’s a whole range of mills in the Mock Mill range. And they’re called Mock Mill because they’re designed by a man called Wolfgang Mock, who is a very highly regarded mill designer in Germany. So it’s a German company. And Wolfgang Mock has been designing mills for over 30 years and a lot of the popular benchtop stone mills that people would have heard of, like the Como and the, I’m trying to think of them all, Haywas. There’s a few different types of mills. They’ve all been designed by him. But I guess the Mock Mill is probably the latest iteration of that and he set it up as a separate company.

Elly:
Okay. Yeah, so it’s a Mock Mill 200 and there’s a whole lot of, yeah, like I said, there’s different ones in the range, but the 200 is probably at the more humble end of the range. There are really premium mills that cost a lot more with lovely timber housing, but the one that I’ve got is it has like an eco-plastic type housing. So it’s, yeah, one of the more affordable ones, but they’re all the same on the inside. And they’re stone mills, so they have a little hopper at the top, just as you would expect like a bigger stone mill to have. It has a hopper at the top and it feeds the grains in through the middle in between two stones that the top one is stationary and the bottom one spins around run by a motor and the grain goes in, is going to kind of fed out in between the stones and then the flour gets pushed out the side and it comes out the chute. So that’s the mill. Okay. Yeah, but there’s lots of different types. I know you’ve got a different type of milling set up, Alison, don’t you?

Alison:
See, mine’s a roller mill and mine’s a hand crank. Yes. It was much cheaper. Yes. And I didn’t know how much I would want to use home milled grain. So I just kind of dipped my toe in the water. Yeah. I didn’t have the budget to get a mock mill. yeah and so can you explain the difference between mine which is a roller mill yeah and stone mill and what happens to the.

Elly:
Flowers okay well to be honest with you I don’t know exactly how your little mill works from what I’ve seen I know that it can flake grains like you can make rolled oats with it so my understanding is that it you crank the grains you push them between rollers and it basically squashes them that’s right and then yeah rob good old rob does it puts them through repeatedly in order to break them down further and further and further is that right

Alison:
That’s right, yeah. That’s right.

Elly:
Okay. So that’s one type of, you know, hand mill, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. I think that’s a great little technology if it works. I don’t know how many times Rob has to put it through to get flour, and obviously there’s all sorts

Alison:
Of – He puts it through like maybe four or five times, so it takes a lot longer than I’ve seen with your mock mill, and also it’s not as fine. Right. you know we we’re we’re going to um keep you on the line after we finished and video you showing um grinding the grain in the kitchen and making a dough so that’s going to be for patrons so if you’re interested to go deeper into um seeing how Ellie grinds her grains then head over to the Patreon feed because there will be a video there but I’ve seen the way your flour comes out of your meal and it’s much much finer than mine and it takes like literally like a minute whereas Rob’s there doing it four or five times to get mine out and it’s much thicker that’s right.

Elly:
Well it’s driven by a motor and it’s and it’s pushed through these very very hard grindstones and it just shoots it out and it is very fine it’s it’s a really nice it’s very similar to to a store-bought whole grain stone milled flour from comparisons that you know that’s what I always used to use the stuff that was milled in a great big stone mill um the mock mill flour is pretty much the same fineness um depending on how you adjust it I’ve

Alison:
Heard you but I’ve heard you talking about the difference between stone milling and roll and this I think is relevant to anyone who’s baking bread whether they want to mill their own or whether they’re buying the flour could you talk a little bit about why stone milling even if it costs more if you’re buying flour is a is a better choice or a more sensible.

Elly:
Choice definitely so just to begin with I’d like to make the distinction between roller milling in terms of your Italian roller mill flaker that you have and roller milling in terms of the industrial style roller milling because they’re two very different things So when I think of roller milling, I’m not thinking of your roller mill, your benchtop hand-cranked thing. I’m thinking of the big industrial machines that really revolutionised bread production, flour production throughout the world in the late 1800s when they were invented. So prior to that, all flours, to my knowledge, were milled in stones. And, you know, many countries have rich traditions of flour mills in towns and villages, often by a stream. Often, you know, mills were run either by wind, windmill or water mills. You know, the water going past the stream would power the mill to turn the stones so people would go to the mill and get their flour.

Elly:
And with stone milling, basically the whole grain goes in the top and the whole grain gets crushed up and turned into flour. So most cereal grains have three parts to them. They have the outer bran, so the outer skin, which is the really fibrous part. They have the germ that I mentioned before, which is the embryo of the seed, and that’s the really oily part. And then they have the bulk of the grain, which is usually around probably about 80%. That’s the endosperm, and that’s the really high-energy, starchy part. So with modern refined flowers, most of those, depending on where you live, but say for

Elly:
Every flour that I know of that I buy in a supermarket in Australia, not that I do, but if I did, if I walked in there, they would all be roller milled. And it’s fairly obviously with refined flours, so commonly like plain flour in Australia, bread flours are usually all roller milled. Any really white refined flour are usually roller milled. And what roller milling, industrial roller milling does, does is it’s very, very efficient. And I don’t know exactly how the machines work, but they call them roller mills. And what they’re able to do is very efficiently separate the parts of the grain. So they’re able to separate the bran, they’re able to separate the germ and separate the endosperm and grade all of those bits. And then what that leaves the miller with is all these different parts of flour products, I guess you could say, that they can then remix and combine in specific ratios

Elly:
To meet the need of whatever product they’re trying to create or sell. So the reason why, for example, in Australia, and I know this is not the case in other countries, but in Australia you can only get refined roller milled flowers on the supermarket shelf is because it’s shelf stable. So all of the bran is taken out. They’re able to separate the bran out, separate the oily germ part where a lot of the nutrition is, by the way. And the starchy endosperm part, it spoils a lot less. It lasts a lot longer because it doesn’t have the oily part in it.

Andrea:
So the…

Elly:
But, yeah, I guess that – sorry, I lost my train of thought there – that part of the grain is much more shelf-stable. So I guess roller milling has its place. And if you’re a pastry chef or you’re wanting to make lovely big billowy white bread, which there’s no judgment from me about that. I think it really just depends on what you’re trying to achieve and what your goals are for making the types of bread or bakery products that you want to make. You need to have refined flours to make those because it’s the bran and the germ in the grain, all those parts of the grain that make bread heavier and it’s not really appealing to a lot of people. You know, white bread is what people have often seen as the ideal, so that’s what people go for. Yeah, it’s a bit of a complex topic and there’s lots of different kind of angles into it. Does that sort of answer the question about the difference? Yeah. Yeah.

Alison:
Yeah. Yeah, it does.

Andrea:
It does. And then you mentioned some earlier, but could you just list off the things that you put through your mill, like the different grains you use?

Elly:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, for my bread making, I tend to mostly bake with wheat. I use hard white wheat. I use a lot of spelt. I use a lot of rye and sometimes oats as well. But I also, you can mill all sorts of things in a benchtop stone mill. So anything that’s not too oily. Obviously, some grains are quite oily. Oats, for example, have got about, I think they’re about 7% fat, so they’re a bit of an oily grain. You can’t mill oats too finely or they clog up the millstones a bit, but you can mill pretty much any kind of cereal grain, including legumes and things like chickpeas and beans, all sorts of things. So anything that’s dry and that’s not too big that can actually go through the hopper, you can adjust the stones to do a coarse grind and some things that are big like chickpeas or garbanzo beans, as you would call them probably in the States, Andrea, you can put them in first on a coarse grind and then run them through again to get a really fine flour like the Beeson flour. So I mill all those kinds of things. even

Elly:
For gluten-free sourdough baking, which I’ve been experimenting a bit with lately. As requested by some of my audience, I’ve been milling millet and brown rice and sorghum, buckwheat, those kinds of things. And I was going to say too, sometimes I am able to get whole mung beans, which mung beans are quite commonly used in some Indian style dhala recipes and I find that the muck mill, it doesn’t split them neatly in half. It’s not a splitter. It is kind of going to crush them and grind them a bit, but it does do a really nice coarse grind of a small mung bean, which is fairly, I don’t know if you know what a mung bean looks like, but there’s a fairly small little green bean and they, it makes a kind of a chunky dal that you can then cook in a pot to make a stew or a soup with.

Andrea:
So you can do all sorts of things, really, anything that’s not oily.

Elly:
So you can’t put oily seeds like lint seeds or, you know, you couldn’t put sunflower seeds or anything like that in a mock meal. It has to be like a dry grain that’s got enough, just a fairly low amount of oil in it compared to those oily seeds and things.

Alison:
Okay that’s really useful it’s nice to hear about legumes because i kind of don’t think of putting legumes through a grain mill it’s um, It’s a world that I wouldn’t have imagined until I’ve talked to you about doing it.

Elly:
Yeah, right. It’s interesting, actually, the general manager of the Mock Mill Company, he’s an American man but he’s lived in Germany for a very long time but I think he originates from Texas. He is a passionate whole grain sourdough baker and if you look him up on Instagram if anybody’s interested, his name is Paul Lebeau and I think his account is called Paul Lebeau, Germany. Paul is absolutely passionate. He calls them mock millables or millables and he’s just on this never-ending quest to find all sorts of different things that he can run through his mill and he often uses. It’s great though because he’s got this really amazing low-waste approach. Like he will, you know, find some berries and he’ll ferment the berries or he’ll skin, you know, and he’ll get the skins off this or the waste off that and he’ll ferment that and then he’ll add that to his Levan, you know, to create a new starter for his bread. He’s really quite, he does a lot of amazing fermentation. He’s just absolutely passionate and so creative and he’s a great ambassador for the brand,

Andrea:
You know, for the company that he works for.

Elly:
He really does.

Alison:
Sounds like our sort of man for sure.

Elly:
Yeah, he’s great. Definitely have a look because it will really open your mind to what kinds of things you can make bread out of, whether or not you’re milling them yourself. I mean, it might even give people ideas about things that you could use, that you could run through a blender or a food processor. You know, it’s not necessarily all about the milling. But, yeah, you can do a lot of things with the – I mean, I guess it’s just another type of food processing equipment really, isn’t it that’s just specifically designed for whole grains

Alison:
How do you feel about our food world do you want to see change like we do if so head over to patreon.com forward slash ancestral kitchen podcast and help support us to get this work out as far and wide as we can to say thank you we’ve got a host of extra ancestral food material to share with you you can connect with us more deeply via our patron exclusive podcasts, our after show chats, our dedicated forum and our ancestral food get togethers. And there’s a library of downloads that will support you in your own kitchen. By joining, you’ll be really helping us to continue making this podcast and to focus on having a bigger impact, reaching more people, making a greater difference. So we can move together towards the future food world we all want to see.

Alison:
We’ve got four levels of support to suit different pockets. Check out www.patreon.com forward slash Ancestral Kitchen podcast for all the details. Let’s talk about your process because I’ve seen a video on, I think it was on your YouTube channel, of your big freezer where you put your grains. And I want you to explain to people the sort of start to finish. So from buying the grain, how you store the berries, how you grind them, how you defrost them out the freezer, how you grind them, and then how you put them in bread. Talk us through that.

Andrea:
Sure. Yeah.

Elly:
So I buy my grains from my supplier here in Brisbane, Sovereign Foods that I mentioned. And like I said before, depending on what they are and how much we use of them, but the grains like rice, felt, and wheat, I try and buy in 20 kilo bags or at least 10 kilos. So that’s like, how many pounds is that? 10 pounds.

Alison:
A lot.

Elly:
Yeah, 50 pounds. I don’t know. Roughly two pounds to a kilo. So they’re big bags. And I buy them in that size because I can store them. I’m lucky to have the space to be able to do that. But what I do these days is when I get them home, I only buy grains that I have the room for. Because I want to freezer treat them. I always do that. So all of my grains and even all my lentils, a lot of my legumes and everything just gets put straight into my freezer. I don’t have a very large freezer, but I do have a dedicated little chest freezer. I’ve had it for years. I used to, you know, I used to make my bread in bulk and freeze some of my bread, and I use it for all sorts of different things. But mostly these days that kind of grain produce goes in there.

Elly:
And so I put it in the freezer and I leave it in there until I want to decant it into smaller containers that I then keep in my kitchen near my mill. You don’t have to do it that way, but I do it because I have the space and I don’t need to free up space in that freezer for anything else usually. Um the reason why i put it in the freezer is that most cereal grain crops especially ones that are grown without pesticides um you run the risk with all of them that they may have eggs weevil eggs on them because they’re just a common weevils are a little beetle. They’re around the world. All cereal grains are subject to having some contact with weevils because that’s just what they eat. They’re a specialised little beetle and that’s what they go for. And they seek out cereal grains and they have these little beetles have little

Elly:
Long kind of prongy mouth bits on the front of them they look like antenna but that’s actually their mouth and they chew a little bit into the grain and they lay their eggs in the grain and cover that up and on any grain that you buy from anywhere unless it’s heavily treated with pesticides which hopefully we’re not buying that kind of grain there’s potential that you could get a weevil outbreak. If you leave your grains in warm, hot, moist conditions, like in high humid climates, especially like where I live, it’s the subtropics. Our winters are quite dry, but our summers are really quite hot and humid. If you leave the grains out in those conditions, eventually, if you left them long enough, you’re probably likely to get some bugs hatching out of them at some point so a way to get around that is to freezer treat your grains you don’t need to leave your grains in the freezer forever but it’s a really good practice and it depends on what climate you live in obviously it’s really important for me in this climate

Elly:
But you can just, if you buy grains in big bags, you can put them into smaller bags. So if you’ve just got a regular size fridge type freezer, you could put them into smaller bags and then just put them in the freezer for a week or so. And what that does is it kills the eggs. So once you’ve freezer treated your grain and brought them out of the freezer or you put them in the freezer and you leave them in there, then you’ll be much less likely to have any issues with bugs on your grain.

Alison:
So something really weird happened yesterday, Ellie. It’s like some synchronicity. I’ve been away for a little while. I got my spelt grain, my bag of spelt grain out of the cupboard because I want to make beer. And I just unrolled the top because it’s in kind of like a, you know, a cardboard bag. Yes. And I got two bowls out and I saw two little black things in the bowls and then I opened it up and I said to Rob oh my gosh I think there’s something in here and he sort of kind of looked he said yeah there’s loads and loads of these little beetles and there were weevils in there so literally just yesterday I because I’ve left this bag my heart breaks it was about two and a half kilos in the cupboard when I was away and of course it’s warm yeah now because it was August yeah and I got weevils in my spell so I can testify Yes, it does happen.

Elly:
It does happen. It does happen. And I think it’s a great topic. I’m glad you asked about this. And I know we’re only just beginning of my process, but the weevils are really important. Reason why I do it that way and why I really encourage anybody else who’s buying grains and wants to store them for any length of time to freezer treat them even if you can find some space just to put break break your grains down into bags yeah you know small or big enough that you can fit in your freezer and just one by one put them in for a week take it out put the next one in leave it in for a week take it out just to see

Alison:
That that’s my that’s what would help me because I don’t have a big freezer like you I have just a fridge and a freezer together and I’ve got three drawers in my freezer and I’ve got you know I’ve got meat in there I’ve got frozen whey in there I’ve got cooked breads in there I’ve got loads of things in there and I buy my grain in five kilogram bags and so it would be hard for me but I could possibly if I was organized I could decant them into smaller like one kilo bags and then rotate them in the freezer to stop that does it affect the taste.

Elly:
No not at all does

Alison:
It do anything.

Elly:
Not at all okay so as long as they’re sealed um and no moisture can get in or out they will be exactly the same coming out as they are when they go in you do have to be careful for condensation when you bring them out and so when I decant my, I just honestly, I’ll put my big paper sacks, my big sacks of grains straight into the freezer, just in the bags. And then when my containers in my kitchen get empty, I take them over to the freezer and I just open the top of the bag. I usually keep the bags just closed with pegs or clips or something. And I just scoop the grains out, quick, put them into the plastic containers or jars or whatever I’m using, put the lid on and keep that lid on until the grain comes down to room temperature. Because if you’ve got any humidity in the air, the difference between the temperature, the cold temperature of the frozen grain and the outside temperature will cause condensation on the surface of the container. So you want to keep that closed. Or if it’s a bag, just don’t open it until everything warms up and you can wipe off any condensation on the outside. If you just scooped your grain out of your freezer bag and put it into a bowl and left it at room temperature, especially at my place in summertime, it would be wet. It would just be wet with condensation.

Elly:
So you don’t want wet grain. You want them nice and dry. So just keep it all sealed up until the temperature comes down. Sorry, I keep saying calms down. I mean comes up.

Andrea:
I’ve got that the wrong way around.

Elly:
Until the temperature comes up to room temperature.

Andrea:
This would fully kill the weevils, right? Like, you know, say Allison, if she had frozen that and then she put it in the cupboard and then she left and she was gone. Yeah. They wouldn’t have hatched or whatever they did.

Elly:
The sad thing about having actual weevil beetles is that they’ve been in your grain for quite a while in lava and then lava stage and then they’ve pupated and become the beetles and then they’ve hatched out of your grain. How weevils work is they don’t get into, usually, unless you live on a farm next to a grain silo and you get very unlucky,

Elly:
A lot of people think they need to protect their grain from bugs from the outside but it’s actually the eggs on the grain itself so you’re probably more likely bringing in the potential for weevils with the grain that you already have so your allison in your case your grain just like any other grain probably had some weevil eggs on it because they’re around you know in farms that grow grains they would have weevils they’re just a natural part of that ecology um some of your grains would have had eggs and your grain would have been stored even though it was sealed um those eggs in the right temperature conditions so in your hot summer weather that you’ve been having lately and high humidity helps i know you don’t have really high humidity there but the heat is probably enough, what happens is that those eggs will eventually hatch into lava and the lava are in the grain. They burrow into the grain and they consume the endosperm, the starchy, high-energy part of the grain.

Elly:
And as they grow and then once they become nice, mature little weevils, they burrow their way out and you end up with this hollow grain and live, love, live adult weevils that have hatched in your cupboard in your pantry. So that would have all been in the grain and I wouldn’t try and consume any of that grain because you might have, there might be more of it. Yeah, yeah. It’s the best thing to do. The other thing that can be a real issue is if you’ve got some grain that has… Become infested with weevils and if that’s not sealed properly like if you keep i learned this the hard way if you keep things in your cupboard you know in a bag with a peg on the top um rather than an airtight hard sealed container if weevils hatch in your grain they can crawl out of that bag and then they get into your whatever else is next to them they love things like pasta and you know any other grains or any other cereal grain type product passes probably the classic example they will love that too they’ll get into that and then you’ve got to clean out your whole cupboard and yeah get rid of them so

Alison:
We had we checked the whole cupboard opened up all of the other grains they were quite well sealed but we opened them up anyway and we checked the bags to make sure there were no kind of holes in the bags or anything and everything else looked okay that’s good um if i free if i freeze them on that rotation system and then i’ve got a bag that’s been in the freezer yep i’m safe to leave it in the cupboard after that because the eggs will be dead they won’t come back to life.

Elly:
As far as i know as far as i know yeah all of the information that i’ve been able to research tells me that uh i think 72 hours in the freezer will kill the eggs it has to be obviously freezing temperature like my freezer’s around about 20 minus 20 um centigrade i don’t know what that is in fahrenheit but has to be proper freezing temperatures yeah they don’t like the cold and if it’s cold enough or long enough they will freeze if you’re putting them in for big bigger bags I would definitely leave them in longer than 72 hours because it can take a few days for that cold frozen temperature to really permeate through the bag if you’ve got a big bag so I tend to err on the side of caution and leave them in as long as possible I think if you can do a week five to seven days and your bags aren’t really massive big bags which they won’t be then that should be fine.

Alison:
Is it worth freezing flour if we’re buying flour, not grains?

Elly:
I think it is, yes, but probably for different reasons. You’re not going to have any issues with weevils hatching out of bags of flour unless the flour has become very compacted and the weevils can hatch in there and they can kind of find a way to burrow in the flour because really they love grains. They’re designed to attach to grains and burrow into them and have their life cycle in the actual grain. So flour is not so much of an issue. But in terms of storing flour in the freezer or the fridge, it’s a great idea just to preserve the freshness. Unless you’re using roller milled, more refined flours that have that oily part removed, your flowers if they’re whole flowers they will be more prone to spoilage and they will taste and smell and be a lot better if you extend the shelf life and freezing or refrigerating is a great way to do that

Alison:
Okay that’s useful and so going back to your berries you’ve taken them out of the freezer you’ve put them in a container and sealed yes that container and you’ve waited for them to defrost and then do they go straight into your meal?

Elly:
Yeah, well I just put those containers into my cupboard. I’ve got a little cupboard just below my bench where I make my bread and they’re just there ready for me to go whenever I want to mill them. So I don’t mill any flour in advance at all. I just, when I want to make bread, I pull out my grain tubs and And I go, oh, what am I going to make?

Andrea:
And I just

Elly:
Choose which grains I want to use. And I pull the mill out. Well, the mill just sits on the bench. I just plug it in and throw the grain in. And out comes the flour and I make my bread. So there’s never any excess flour. I just mill on demand. So it’s only the grains are just in my cupboard in amounts that I can store because obviously I can’t store a 20-kilo bag of spelt in

Andrea:
My kitchen cupboard.

Elly:
So I’ve got all my different grains in there. But, yeah, it’s just my system that kind of works for me. If you had, you know, it depends on your kitchen set up and what size pantry you have, you might be able to store larger amounts. But I find it quite useful just to have, I think my containers are probably maybe five or six litres. Like they’re fairly large. I don’t have to go to my freezer and fill them up. Very regularly, probably once every month or so, depending on what I’m using and how much of what things I’m using. I use different grains all the time for different reasons, so some of them I go through faster than others. Yeah.

Alison:
Okay. How long do the grains last? I mean, should I not keep them in the freezer for that long? Or should I – and if I haven’t got the freezer space, how long can I leave them in my cupboard?

Elly:
Well, it depends on what you read. I’ve read all sorts of different recommendations for grain storage, but I tend to think that if you’ve given them the freezer treatment and you’ve done your best to kill off any weevil eggs, if they are stored in reasonably cool, dry conditions, they will last for years. I think I saw something on some news report or something a couple of years ago where they found wheat grains from ancient Egypt, from some tomb or somewhere in Egypt, and they germinated it. Oh, no, wow. Yeah, don’t quote me on that. I’d have to actually find the source. But some crazy story like that. So, you know, there are seed banks around the world, and we all know that depending on what seed it is, seeds can last a very, very, very, very long time if they’re stored properly. And I know there’s that big seed bank, I think it’s in Norway and it’s under the ice where they, it’s like a worldwide seed bank and they actually collect seed from all different parts of the world

Elly:
And they store it under freezing conditions. And there’s seeds that are in that seed bank that have been there for decades. So I don’t exactly know how long my wheat grain would last in a bucket after I’d freezer treat it, but I think based on my experience I would be Wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t have any issues for a few years. But I’ve heard people say much longer as well. I know people who say, you know, I saw somewhere on a Facebook group or somewhere recently where somebody made some bread, milled some wheat out of 20-year-old wheat that somebody had given them that they had stored in a bucket. So it’s a long time just depending on.

Alison:
So that is completely different to pre-ground flour. because the recommendations on that. I think the manufacturer recommendations are like, some of them say six months, some of them say a year, but other people who make bread say probably less than that.

Elly:
Probably less, yeah. So that’s completely different. My old rule of thumb, because as I said before, I always bought pre-milled, whole grain, stone ground flour. So I knew that it had all of those parts that could spoil in it. I always bought them in flour form. And I used to put them in the fridge whenever I had the space. and I bought them from a bulk food supplier not too far from me. So I used to go fairly regularly and just buy a few kilos at a time so that I could get it as fresh as possible. And my rule was about a month maximum. But depending on the season, I would let things, store things for longer in winter here because it’s cooler and drier and our summer season is terrible. Like I try and store so many things that probably most people just leave on the shelf I try and get them in the freezer or in the fridge here in our summer just because of the humidity and the and the high temps So, yeah, unfortunately there’s no real hard and fast guidelines for that. Everybody seems to have different ideas, but there’s certainly a lot of people who have reported having X really, really long shelf life of whole grains.

Andrea:
And do you use your home ground flowers to refresh your starter? And if you do, which I’m guessing you do.

Elly:
Yeah, I do.

Andrea:
Do you grind just a tiny bit at a time to do that?

Elly:
No. So, yes, I do use my freshly milled flour to feed my starter, but there’s two ways that I do it. The public way,

Andrea:
So that I don’t confuse anybody when I make my YouTube videos,

Elly:
Is I have two fairly small little, they’re just like 500ml containers, like about a pint size just plastic containers where I fill them with whatever flour I’m using to feed my starter I’ve got two starters at the moment because I’ve just been experimenting with some whole grain gluten-free sourdough recipes so I’ve got one at the moment has some brown rice flour that I milled and one has some whole wheat flour that I milled so I just for the sake of convenience.

Elly:
I pre-mill that. That’s the only flour I do pre-mill, but I don’t fill them up and I refresh that fairly regularly. So I’ll probably have enough for maybe two or three weeks and then it will run out and then I’ll just refresh those when I need to. And I use those to feed my starter. But the way that I would do it if I wasn’t trying to keep things sort of a bit more straightforward, is every time I mill flour to make my bread, I would just mill a bit extra of whatever flour I’m milling. I would just mill a bit extra and use that to feed the starter. And that’s the ultimate way to do it because then the starter is getting really fresh flour as well. However, if you’re milling all sorts of different weird and wonderful grains, including legumes or what have you for your bread, then that’s what you’re going to get in your flour. Right. Although you could if you really wanted to, say, if you fed your starter with rye, if you really wanted to, you could get out a little bit of rye at the end and run that through. You definitely could do that. I just… There’s just lots of ways to do things.

Andrea:
Yeah. Yeah. And do you keep those little 500ml containers in the fridge?

Elly:
No, I don’t. I probably should, but I don’t. But I don’t actually fill them. That’s the size of the container, but I probably only mill about a third, only a couple of cups full at a time, just enough for a couple of weeks of starter feeding. Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s okay. I’m not too worried. My starters are really happy, So they seem to be okay with two-week-old flour, considering that.

Andrea:
Maybe they like it.

Elly:
Maybe they catch some. I’m sure they do. The yeast doesn’t go by. Yeah. I mean, I made my bread with all sorts of flour that had been sitting on supermarket shelves forever and, you know, fresh whole-grain flours from the health food shop that I don’t know how long they sat in the bulk bins for. So anything that I’m doing here is always going to be a lot fresher than what I used to do. And what I used to do worked really well too. So, you know, it’s okay.

Alison:
Now, I remember that your main starter is called Boris, and I wonder if you’ve called your gluten free starter a different name.

Andrea:
Oh, gosh. Well, I was going to call her Natasha. I don’t know.

Elly:
Somebody, no, I haven’t,

Andrea:
I don’t know.

Elly:
It didn’t really stick. I felt a bit silly about it.

Andrea:
No, I think I’ve moved beyond naming my stars. I’m going red.

Elly:
No.

Alison:
Okay. What I wanted to ask now is a budget question. Oh, yes. So there is a range of mock mills for different budgets, but they are quite pricey. Yes. What would you say to someone who can’t quite stretch to a grain mill yet but wants the best possible flour for their bread at home?

Elly:
I would say find a supplier of as, you know, as locally sourced as possible grains. Find a mill near you, find a co-op, find somebody near you who is supplying freshly milled or stone milled whole grain flowers if that’s what you want to use and support them and buy your flowers through them. Ask them where they come from ask them how old they are ask them how do they store them do they refrigerate them how do they manage pests how do they improve their shelf life ask them what their storage practices are and you’ll soon get an idea of where you’re able to get things from that that um you know it’s as fresh as possible but just find the freshest flower that you can and store it in the best way that you can and that’s a great way to do it.

Alison:
Okay. Thank you. That’s helpful.

Elly:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Yeah. Yeah, that is. And tell us a little bit, there can’t be anybody on here that doesn’t know about you yet, Ellie.

Elly:
I think we mention you on

Andrea:
Every single episode, but your YouTube is so awesome. So tell us a little bit about what you’ve been up to over there and where I’m always pointing people over there,

Elly:
But where

Andrea:
Should they start if they’ve never been to your channel

Elly:
Before okay um thank you i really just follow my nose with my youtube channel i don’t have any grand designs with it i really follow what the need is so people email me or ask me questions to show me different things and sometimes there’s a big learning process for me behind that too and i go okay yep i’m prepared to

Andrea:
Take that on so i’ll

Elly:
Have a go and then if i can work something out that’s helpful then I’ll share it lately my latest example of that is I’ve been playing around with some gluten-free sourdough bakes and I’ve come up with a very simple straightforward accessible recipe for a gluten-free sourdough bread I don’t personally have any need to eat gluten-free bread but I know a lot of people do or that’s their choice for whatever reason and it’s something that people I was getting lots and lots of requests over the years I thought you know I’ve dabbled in this over the years just for fun and it is fun I do like playing around with different things like that um so I decided to pursue that so that’s what my latest video is about and the one before that I thought oh well I better do a how to do a gluten free starter video so that’s what I’ve been doing lately just that starter video and um it’s funny the starter video that I did about gluten-free sourdough starters, I actually made a whole wheat and a brown rice starter side by side just to show people that there’s no difference. There’s no difference in making a brown rice sourdough starter compared to a wheat or a rye or whatever. You just use the same process. It’s a simple fermentation process. So that was fun. That was good and from the feedback I’ve got was pretty helpful and the the

Elly:
The first gluten-free recipe came out last week and, yeah, people have been sending me their photos and they’ve been doing really amazing bakes. So that’s been going well.

Andrea:
I’m so excited about it. Yeah. It’s been fun. I got my hands on a brown rice sourdough starter because I was like, I got to try this. I have so many people who want gluten-free sourdough or have asked if I could make some or help them make it. And like you, I haven’t.

Elly:
Yeah.

Andrea:
I thought, well, I should learn. But then Ellie’s paving the way, so I’m just going to follow.

Elly:
And look, I have to say, I thought about whether or not I even needed to do it because there are already so many really good resources on gluten-free sourdough out there. There’s so many.

Andrea:
Yeah, but we like you.

Elly:
Well, I just tried to put my spin on it and really, you know, I spent a lot of time testing it. I think I made about 15 of these things and I used the same recipe. I tried to actually follow a very methodical process to really teach myself what matters and what doesn’t and I worked out that the real trick with gluten-free sourdough, as is with nearly all whole-grain sourdough, by the way, is just the proofing. You’ve really got to under-proof. If it looks good and it’s risen really high, you’ve probably well and truly gone too far you’ve always you’ve you’ve got to prove it really small yeah that was a huge learning curve for me so yeah that’s what I try and do I just try and go where the need is and try and figure it out so that I can understand it and then try and make recipes that make sense, that don’t have too much detail, that explain the things that really matter and really make a difference and try and gloss over the rest because it’s all the detail that overwhelms people, I think. Absolutely.

Alison:
You are very effective at that.

Elly:
Oh, thanks. Yeah, that’s my mission.

Andrea:
This is kind of just help.

Elly:
I’m just trying to help people, really, and that’s how it all started. like it’s all just I was telling somebody my whole story with it the other day it all just started with teaching my friends how to make the bread and one day I’ve got enough people who asked me about it so I did a little class here at my house and everybody came and they all loved it and then my auntie said oh come and teach classes at my shop so I did that and they all came and it just it just kind

Andrea:
Of and then I was like whoa I’m working full-time it was too much

Elly:
So I said I I can’t do classes anymore. Oh, but people kept emailing me. Oh, I’ll just put a video on YouTube.

Andrea:
So I put a video on YouTube and then it just, oh, gosh, it just kept going.

Elly:
So I’m just still.

Alison:
Yeah, beautiful, organic development.

Elly:
Yeah, absolutely. And I haven’t really changed my, there’s no approach. That’s just my approach is just people seem to want to, people keep asking me so I just keep doing it. And it’s a pleasure for me it’s a great honor so i go yes i’d love to yeah it’s fun how

Alison:
Can people stay in contact with you tell us the name of your youtube channel and the other kind of mediums you’re on.

Elly:
Okay oh yes and i forgot to answer the second part of that question if people want to start um i’ve just rejigged all of the playlists on my youtube channel so my bread making channel is called Ellie’s Everyday Whole Grain Sourdough and all of my recipes on there are 100% whole grains so it’s really that niche you know if you really want to make whole grain breads then that’s what I’m doing there. So if you go to that YouTube channel just on the home page there you will see all of the playlists I’ve put them all on the front page and it’s hopefully it’s fairly logical there’s a section on sourdough starters how to make one and how to maintain one

Elly:
Whole wheat recipes, whole spelt recipes, whole rye recipes, gluten-free recipes, baking tips and techniques, things like that. So that’s probably the best thing to do, just have a browse and see what you like. I’ve got, also have a website, ellieseveryday.com, and the blog section there. Basically, whenever I put out a new recipe, I add it there. So most of my more recent recipes and other topics, I’ve got things like, you know, five top tips for whole grain sourdough baking, because it is the most challenging bread baking that you can do, I have to say. It’s not easy to get really nice results with 100% whole grains. You know, refined flours do really make bread making easy. But um you know not doing it because that part’s easy kind of really

Andrea:
It’s so worth

Elly:
Really loving that challenge yeah yeah not many people are doing it so I thought there’s a real need for that because there’s people people want to make this kind of bread oh absolutely yeah so so many

Andrea:
Times that people tell me oh this this is a good einkorn book or or this is a great sourdough book and then when I look it’s all refined einkorn it’s white yeah

Elly:
And it’s

Andrea:
Completely different than what I’m working with and

Elly:
How it works for me. Yeah, exactly.

Andrea:
So you’re right. There is a big need for that.

Elly:
And, you know, on my website I’ve got, I do have a section under the sourdough part about storing whole grains, so all the stuff about weevils and the storage methods, I’ve covered all that there. So between my website and that Ellie’s Everyday Whole Grain Sourdough YouTube channel, you’ll find what you want. But I’m happy for people to email me, get in touch as well, if they can’t find something that they’re looking for or they just don’t know where to start and need a bit of encouragement, I do a lot of that behind the scenes, so feel free to get in touch as well.

Alison:
Wonderful. Thank you. Andrea, do you have more questions for Ellie?

Andrea:
I’ll save them for the next one. Okay. I always have more questions.

Elly:
Oh, gosh.

Andrea:
This is wonderful. I feel like I learned a lot.

Alison:
It’s been really, really informative and educational and fun, Ellie. Thank you ever so much. Thank you.

Elly:
Thanks for having me. And thank you for all the good work you two are doing. It’s wonderful to be invited to be part of it again. Thank you.

Andrea:
Thank you, Ellie.

Alison:
Thank you. we are going to head over to um the patreon channel now and i’m really excited to see you smelling some grains so let’s get on with that thank you ever so much okay bye bye, thank you so much for listening we’d love to continue the conversation come find us on instagram andrea’s at farm and hearth and allison’s at ancestral underscore kitchen until next time we both wish you much fun exploration and.

Music:
Music