FAQ

A home grain milling machine is your best bet, and usually provides the finest flour. Although there are other options… You may also use a hand grinder, food processor, or coffee bean grinder. (I’ve even used a cheap blender in a pinch!) I use a hand crank grain milling machine and I love it! (Many of them are available with an electric motor attachment so you can use them with or without electricity). My favorite thing about the grain milling machine is how I can customize the coarseness of my flour. Sometimes I’m in the mood for a hardier bread or cracked wheat with more grit and sometimes I want a smooth fluffy loaf or pancakes. You can also blend different types of berries. A half hard red and half hard white flour mix makes a beautifully flavorful bread!

To get the ultimate shelf life out of your products, keep your storage containers in a cool, dry location such as a pantry, closet, or basement storage room. The garage is usually not advisable as it can often get too hot or too cold. Keeping your buckets stored between 40 – 75 degrees will ensure that your product remains nutrient rich for many years!* The shape of our bucket and the style of the lid helps eliminate wasted space when storing… and the handle is great for easy transportation! (*The Mylar provides the necessary airtight seal, and the oxygen pack removes the oxygen from the environment. The bucket protects the Mylar from puncture. Read more about requirements for re-sealable freshness below, “Are your products resealable?”).

Hard Red Wheat has a nuttier flavor that works very well for artisan-style bread. A loaf made with Hard Red Wheat will usually make a slightly more dense loaf than bread made with Hard White Wheat. Hard White Wheat has a softer more mild flavor and has grown to be more popular for making sandwich bread. When it comes to the nutrition between the two berries they are both considered to be whole wheat and powerfully nutritious.

Making great bread is an art. You might need a little practice to start but after that, you can experiment and make all sorts of new things! When it comes to the basics of bread making you need these simple ingredients. Water, oil, salt, sugar, yeast, and flour. The first step is to mix the water, oil, salt, sugar, yeast, and flour to form a dough ball. Next, you will knead the dough. Kneading helps stretch and create gluten strands that will work to trap in the gas created by yeast feeding on sugar. You then set it aside (usually about an hour or 2), allowing the dough to rise. During the rise, the loaf will grow! At this point, you will form the dough into the desired shape and bake.

Children 11 and up will require the same portions as adults. 7 to 10 year olds will require 90%, 4-6 70% & 3 and under 50%. Its important to cook with and become familiar with your food storage in order to “dial in” your family’s needs / tastes. For example, my family has included peanut butter as a supplemental product in our food storage (6-8 month shelf life). One adult portion for 1 year would include:
420lbs of Grain (Wheat, Oats, etc )
80lbs of Legumes (Dry Beans, Split Peas, Lentils etc)
60lbs Sugar
16lbs Powdered Milk
12 Quarts Cooking Oil (Vegetable oil, Olive Oil etc)
8lbs Salt

At Wheatland Seed, we source all our products from trusted local farmers here in northern Utah and Idaho (with the exception of our sugar). Their products are then sent to be tested for 210 chemicals (at an ISO 17025 lab) as well as a Glyphosate test, to ensure that our products are Non-GMO, Sprout-able, High Quality, and Chemical-Free. Wheatland does have a Certified Organic Wheat that we do offer! You can grind these Organic Wheat Berries into Organic Whole Wheat flour to use in your next recipe.

Wheatland Wheat Berries will sprout! Specifically, our Hard Red and Hard White varieties have become the preferred grains of many home spouters. We consistently see sprouting (“germination”) rates above 90%. The process of sprouting whole grains is relatively easy, like everything worthwhile, it does take some time and patience.

Yes. The Mylar is heat-sealed (which makes the bag re-sealable). The sealed Mylar will stay air-tight if it’s not punctured. Because it is re-sealable you can snip a corner off the bag, pour out as much product as you’ll use in the next few months, then quickly (within 3-5 min) re-seal the Mylar and send your food back into long-term storage. The oxygen pack should continue to do its job as long as you re-seal the Mylar as quickly as possible. *IMPORTANT: If your bag is left open for more than 30 minutes, you will want to toss in a new oxygen pack before re-sealing to ensure long-term freshness. If you have opened and re-sealed multiple times, and want to store the remainder for many years, you will want to put in a new oxygen pack. 

To re-seal the Mylar push as much air out of the bag as possible, line up and join the edges of the opened portion and use a straightening iron (a women’s hair styler) to pinch the Mylar with the iron. Hold for a few seconds, then test your seal by pressing both hands down on the bag to see if any air is hissing out of an opening.

Our buckets are packaged with 500CC oxygen absorbers. A 500CC oxygen pack will last about 15 minutes in open air before it expires. You should be able to cut open the mylar bag to get a desired amount of product at least 3 times (open for 3-5 min) before it expires. After which you will want to replace the 500CC oxygen absorber! Following these steps will ensure your product has a 25+ year shelf life!

Yes, we purposely leave 1-2 liters of air inside of the headspace of the mylar liner. We do this for a couple of reasons. The first reason we do this is to protect the mylar from getting punctured by the wheat berries. If we seal the mylar airtight (pull a full vacuum) we risk a small hole forming from the sharp pointed end of a wheat berry. Second, The air inside the headspace acts as a cushion to protect your product during shipping / moving.

At Wheatland Seed, we source all of our products from trusted local farmers here in Northern Utah and Idaho! We work together with our family farmers to guarantee our products are Non-GMO, Sprout-able, High Quality, and Clean. These standards and the ideal growing conditions in the mountain valleys of Idaho and Utah produce powerfully nutritious food.

Vital Wheat Gluten is a supplement used in the bread-making process. VWG is made from the proteins found in the endosperm of wheat berries. VWG acts as a binding agent and as a dough enhancer. Adding a very small amount of vital wheat gluten to your bread recipes may improve the crumb and density of the loaf. It achieves this by allowing more gas to be trapped during the rising phases of bread making. VWG can be helpful but is not necessarily needed for baking bread made with whole wheat grain flour. Just like some 5th graders swear by a pinch of salt in their chocolate milk – some home bakers swear by the results they achieve with a small amount of VWG.

Our sturdy 4 gallon square food storage buckets are designed to eliminate any wasted space and are an easy-to-store addition to your pantry. The design of our food storage bucket lid allows you to stack the buckets on top of each other saving you even more floor space! We suggest stacking them no higher than 5 buckets high. Make sure to secure stacked buckets to avoid falls (no different than a bookshelf).