Organic Whole Oat Flour
Milled to order at Weatherbury Farm from Gehl Hull-less Oats which are grown on the farm
Weatherbury’s Organic Gehl Whole Oat Flour is incredibly nutritious as it is milled from live oat groats. The groats are not steamed and rolled into flakes before processing as happens in the processing of commercial oat flours.
Organic Gehl Whole Oat Flour
Milled to order from Organic Gehl Hull-less Oats grown at Weatherbury Farm.
Tasty and nutritional, oat flour will provide a healthy addition to your palate and your diet.
Weatherbury’s oat flour is milled “live” and not steamed before milling as commercial oat flours are. Thus, none of Weatherbury’s Oats Flour’s vitality, flavor or nutrients are lost in the process.
2lbs* ($7.82 ); 5lbs* ($16.58); 20lbs ($74.64); 50lbs ** ($144.98)
* 2 and 5 pound bags are packaged in re-sealable bags .
** 50lb bags cannot be shipped.
Please note: Weatherbury’s Oats are harvested and cleaned using the same equipment we use for grains with gluten. Weatherbury’s Oat Flour is processed in our mill, where we also process grains with gluten. We do a vigorous cleanout of our mill between flours (thus, after flours containing gluten), and mill it after corn (which is also gluten free); however, it cannot be considered gluten free.
Oat flour is incredibly versatile. Weatherbury Farm offers complete traceability back to the field where the oats were grown.
Harvesting Gehl Oats at Weatherbury Farm
Our Gehl Hull-less Oats Tracker traces the oats that are milled into oat flour back to the field where they were grown, here at Weatherbury Farm. Weatherbury Farm is one of a handful of farms that produces local milled products (milled from grains grown on the farm). But we take it a step further and provide, through our grain tracker, complete traceability — information & pictures of how, when, and where the grain was grown.
When you serve baked goods made with Weatherbury’s Organic Oat Flour, you can pull out your cell phone and click on Weatherbury’s Gehl Hull-less Oats Tracker and let folks see the oats in the field.
In 2021, Feast and Field took an in-depth look at Weatherbury’s oats that you might enjoy reading: Western Pennsylvania’s last remaining estate-grown oats .
Using Weatherbury Organic Gehl Whole Oat Flour
Oatmeal pancakes made with Weatherbury Farm Oat Flour & Rolled Oats — a perfect start for your day or for dinner
The texture of the flour is a slight crumble, slightly less powdery than our other flours. It has a mild oath flavor.
Oat flour can be used to make pancakes and in many baked goods from scones to muffins, but doesn’t work as well as a thickener as Weatherbury’s pastry flour does. Oat flour gives baked goods more flavor than commercial all-purpose flour, with a texture that is chewier and more crumbly.
How to substitute Weatherbury Oat Flour in your own recipes
For quick breads (like banana), pancakes, cookies and muffins, you can use Weatherbury’s Oat Flour 100% as the recipe states. Since oat flour is does not have gluten it can be substituted for about 20 to 25 percent of the flour in a leavened recipe.
Health benefits of Oat Flour
Oats are incredibly nutritious. They are a good source of carbs and fiber and are loaded with important vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Additionally, oats contain a beta-glucan, a fiber found to be very effective in lowering cholesterol. Oats also have avenanthramides, an antioxidant unique to oats, which may help protect blood vessels from the damaging effects of LDL cholesterol and keep blood pressure low.
Whole Oat Flour
Weatherbury’s oat flour is milled “live;” commercial oat flours are steamed before milling. Thus, none of Weatherbury’s Oat Flour’s vitality, flavor or nutrients are lost in the process.
Oat Flour is easier to digest and contains more protein and higher levels of fat, lutein, phosphorus, pyridoxine, potassium, zinc, and beta-carotene than modern wheat flour.
And best of all, it tastes great.
Storing Weatherbury Oat Flour
There are no preservatives in our oat flour. Please refrigerate. If you will not be using the oat flour immediately, please store in the freezer especially in warm weather.
More Information about Oat Flour
History of Oats
Doctor Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary defined the word “oats” as “A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” To which his Scottish Biographer James Boswell replied: “Aye, and that’s why England has such fine horses, and Scotland such fine people.” 1 In Scotland, of course, their porridge (as they call oatmeal) is celebrated each year at the World Porridge Making Championship.
But the history of oats goes much further back than that.
Gehl Oat Flour in the field
At least 32,000 years ago, hunter gatherers were grinding oats. Around 2000 BC there is evidence of oats in Egypt. About this time, farmers began growing oats and oat flour was used for bread and beer.
The Romans and Greeks thought oats to be food for barbarians. Even today, worldwide about 95% of oats are grown as food for animals.
However, by the middle ages, oat flour was being used to produce unleavened bread (e.g. matza and communion bread). And while oats were not popular with the Romans, many Germanic tribes ate baked goods made with oat flour.
Oat flour was also popular in the middle ages in what would become the United Kingdom. Thankfully, the Romans brought oat cultivation to the British Isles. There is archeological evidence c.600 AD of oat cultivation in Scotland, where they are considered a national dish. Right alongside haggis and blood pudding, ingredients for which include oats.
Since 100BC, oats have also been popular in the Swiss Alps as a hearty food to fuel people traversing the Alpine peaks. In turn, this gave rise to Muesli in the 1800s.
In the 17th century, oats came to North and South America. While wheat is the main grain grown in the United States, better than 80 percent of households in the U.S. have oatmeal in their pantry. However, market data shows that the oat flour market in North America is the largest in the world.
Gehl Oats are a hull-less oat bred by the Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada Research Station in Ottawa, Ontario in 1997.
Oats — the grain
Oats (Avena Sativa) are normally grown as a crop with a hull that does not thresh free when harvesting.
We grow Gehl hulless oats, which are planted in the spring. Gehl is the first bald-seeded hulless oat; the hull threshes free from the oat groat which means it can be rolled “live” rather than being steamed prior to rolling. Cleaning the oats and even harvesting the oats is still an itchy proposition. But much less so than with hulled oats and other naked oats.
Farmer Nigel likens cleaning oats (not a fun job!) to working with fiberglass. After we harvest our oats, they are triple-cleaned and rolled, with none of the processing used in producing commercial rolled oats. Thus, Weatherbury’s Organic Oat Flour has oat’s natural vitality, nutrients and flavor.
Other oat products available from Weatherbury Farm:
References:
- Boswell, James The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, 1791