Homemade Oat Flour to Substitute for All-Purpose Flour in Baking

The two foods that I can barely keep up with my family's consumption right now are homemade soup and homemade bread. I've been doing what I can to push other grain consumption, such as making more rice and baking batches of granola. Yet, bread still seems to be a favorite around these parts.

While I still have about 15 pounds of white flour (all-purpose flour made from wheat), I've been watching our family's use and have determined that we need to slow down on the white flour consumption. You all know that I bake just about every baked good that my family consumes, from cakes and pies, to breads and tortillas. In the past couple of weeks, we seem to have had a lot of white flour-only baked goods, which began to drain our supply of that flour.

When I bake yeasted bread, I use about a half and half (white and whole wheat) blend of flours. I had a thought the other day to turn some of my almost 25 pounds of rolled oats into flour, to use as a substitute for part of the white flour in making bread. Yeasted bread still needs some of the glutinous flours, so an all-oat bread would be out of the question for me. But I thought I could still use half whole wheat flour, then a quarter oat flour and a quarter of the white flour and turn out a loaf that my family would enjoy. (Homemade 100% whole wheat loaves are not as appreciated by my clan.)

I tried this out on a single, large loaf of French bread on Friday. It turned out great!

To make oat flour, I processed regular rolled oats in my food processor, much like I would for making instant oatmeal, only pulsing until it looked like a fine meal. 

I have the rest of what I processed stored in a container. I'll make a full baking of bread (4 loaves) this afternoon and use this 1/4, 1/4, 1/2 formula for the flours in the dough.

In the long run, substituting oat flour for all-purpose flour would be more expensive than simply using all-purpose flour. However, for my current circumstances of not wanting to venture out to stores while still having a lot of rolled oats that could be used, this is a good solution. It will enable me to stretch out our supply of AP flour for several extra weeks. And my family still gets lots and lots of homemade bread.

By the way, oat flour also makes great scones and muffins. 

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers While Rationing Our Supplies

We're in week 3 of living off of February's stock-up. We're beginning to run out of some of the fruit that I bought, but otherwise, I think we're doing pretty well so far. As we've talked a bit about, here, I've been trying to use both the exciting and not-so-exciting foods in the meals that I prepare. So, some rice and bean meals as well as meat or cheese meals.

I haven't posted what we've had for weekly meals in a while, so in no particular order or with dates attached, here's what we've been eating since early in the month.

rice, vegetables, and beans mexi-style
 topped with cheese

cheesy tuna and tofu noodle casserole

fried homemade tortilla and bean tostado ,
 slaw on the side

potato and veggie curry topped with cheese,
green beans on the side

homemade flour tortilla chips, carrot sticks,
bean dip

frozen pizza (bought by daughter a while ago),
carrots and green beans

meatloaf and rice smothered with
tomato gravy and carrots

bean burgers topped with gravy made with
meatloaf drippings,
brown rice, frozen spinach and onions --
I began eating right away, I was so hungry!

bean and veggie tostado, green beans

lentil salad on Romaine leaves,
pasta and marinara, carrots

tuna, tofu, veggie, noodle casserole,
sweet & sour slaw

beans 'n' greens with brown rice, sweet & sour slaw

We're eating well, or so it feels. At dinner last night, my husband commented that the kitchen is well stocked. I told him to hold that thought for another 3 weeks and we'll see just how well stocked we are. Although these meals mostly look vegetarian, we do have meat in the freezer. We're just trying to ration it all out. 

I'm excited for this year's garden! I picked a bunch of watercress and sorrel from the garden yesterday. Watercress is the green from last night's dinner. I'll use the sorrel in a pesto for tonight's dinner. I also used garden kale this past week (not shown -- a veggie and lentil soup). I've been working in the garden preparing a larger spot for planting potatoes. The rhubarb is up, but it is so, so tiny still. I'm planning on making a lot of rhubarb jello this spring, as that's such a palatable, reduced-sugar way to use rhubarb. I planted the snow peas on Wednesday and covered that patch with a plastic tunnel row cover. I'm hoping the row cover will help heat the soil and give us snow peas earlier than usual. We shall see.

That's about it for recent meals. What's been on your menu? Are you going to try limiting grocery shopping during this pandemic, or do you feel comfortable with your usual shopping routine right now? While the virus is now in every US state and I think every Canadian province, I understand that this will affect each of us slightly differently. I pray for health and safety for all of us.

Have a wonderful weekend!