Should I Stockpile Wheat or Flour In Long-term Food Storage

Wheat is the cornerstone of any long-term food pantry. You just have to decide what form of wheat fills that niche. Most of my survival wheat is wheat berries (whole wheat kernels), not flour because wheat offers superior flexibility, shelf-life, and nutrition.

Wheat berries are superior to flour for long-term storage. Cook wheat whole, sprout it for greens or plant it in the garden. Wheat is less processed, more nutritious, and has decades more shelf-life than flour. Bleached all-purpose flour is readily available, less expensive than wheat, and can be used for baking.

Flour is a convenient food that should be incorporated and rotated through your food pantry, but I would argue it’s not as flexible as wheat. That said, flour may fit your personal needs for long-term storage. Let’s consider wheat and flour characteristics to help you decide the best fit for your situation.

Re-packaging Wheat Berries & Flour

For maximum shelf-life in long-term storage, wheat berries and flour must be repackaged from store packaging. So it’s a tie when it comes to the hassle of repackaging. Once you learn how to do it, re-packaging food into Oxygen-free storage food is fun and rewarding.

Why Repackage Wheat For Long-term Storage?

Wheat and flour are repackaged into oxygen-free containers like Mylar bags or #10 cans to protect food from spoilers like oxygen, bugs, and moisture.

The best “Do It Yourself” method for repackaging berries and flour is food-grade buckets lined with Mylar bags and sufficient oxygen absorbers to create an oxygen-free environment. For a 5-gallon bucket of wheat lined with an 18×24 Mylar bag, you want to use 2000cc worth of oxygen absorption.

Avoid using just food-grade buckets without Mylar bags because lid seals fail over time, and plastic is not a true oxygen barrier. Also, food-grade plastics can be used down the line for other food-grade purposes like fermenting or carrying water.

Shelf-life Wheat Berries VS Flour

Wheat berries win shelf-life by a mile. Properly packaged and stored, wheatberries will last 30-plus years. All-purpose flour will only last 5 years. In this instance, wheat is a better option for the bulk of your rations if you are working on long-term food storage.

Wheat berries

Before repackaging into Mylar or another Oxygen-free storage, container berries should contain 10% or less moisture to avoid anaerobic food poisoning like botulism.

Once the wheat berries are milled into flour, the clock starts ticking, and nutritional value declines. So plan on milling wheat berries as you use them.

White all-purpose flour

All-purpose white flour stored properly in an oxygen-free container will last 10 years, possibly longer, depending on what you read.

Before storage, flour should contain no more than 10% moisture content to avoid anaerobic food poisoning like botulism.

Whole grain flour An Oxygen-free container won’t extend the shelf-life, and it will go rancid within 6 months regardless of how it is stored. Rancidity occurs due to natural oils from the bran still in the flour.

Looking to store flour for emergencies? Check out the Ready Squirrel article, “How to Store Flour Long and Short Term.”

Nutritional Value Of Wheat Berries and Flour

The nutritional value of wheat berries is superior to bleached all-purpose flour. Let’s hear it for wheatberries. Again they knock it out of the park. White flour has nutritional value because after it’s processed, manufacturers put nutrients back in.

There is no doubt that milling flour from your own wheat berries is more wholesome than buying bleached flour in the store. A wheat berry or kernel that is cooked whole or ground to flour contains the bran, germ, and endosperm of the wheat berry. That’s where the nutrition lies.

Did you know wheat is more nutritious make when first ground into flour? Nutrition begins to decline once the wheat is milled to flour.

When left un-ground, wheat berries retain 80% of their nutritional value at the 30-year mark as long as the hull of the wheat berry hasn’t been cracked.

All-purpose white flour is non-food. You can bake with it and make confectionary delights and fill your belly to stay full, but it’s almost worthless when it comes to nutritional value. The processing of white flour sucks all the nutrients out of it. That’s why it lasts longer than whole wheat flour.

Cost of Wheat VS Flour

Whole wheat kernels are less expensive than flour when you look at all the extra attributes.

In reality, the actual cost of both is a moving target. The cost will depend on your local availability and whether you will have to pay shipping costs. Also, berries are harder to find locally than flour, making them more expensive.

All-purpose flour is available everywhere, so if wheat berries aren’t available locally, the flour will be cheaper.

Ease Of Use of Wheat Vs Flour

I’m not gonna lie. If your using your wheat berries for flour, just purchasing flour is much easier. Milling wheat by hand is a pioneer-level chore. It’s much easier if you use an electric mill when the power is on.

I milled 5.5 lbs of berries not too long ago to make bread and pasta, using my Country Living grain mill, and it took 3 hours. I ended up with 18 cups of flour, but I worked for it. Check out the Ready Squirrel video to watch me mill flour and make homemade pasta.

Electric Milling Wheat Berries

Wheat is easily milled into flour using an electric mill. When times are good, it’s no problem to plug in a mill and go but if you are in a power-out scenario having a hand-crank mill is a good idea.

Check out Ready Squirrel’s Article on Milling flour from wheat berries and baking bread.

Flexibility

There is no doubt, wheat berries are definitely more flexible than flour in long-term food storage. Wheat can also be cooked whole and eaten like porridge, sprouted for fresh greens, planted for wheatgrass, or seeded in the garden to grow wheat.

Cooked Whole Wheat Berries

You can incorporate cooked wheat berries into many dishes. For example, eat them as a breakfast porridge with honey or add them to soups, stews, or salads to amp up nutrition and protein or substitute rice in risotto dishes.

Flexibility and Variety

There are thousands of wheat types you can experiment with. You are not stuck with one type of flour. You can also mix different types of wheat kernels to come up with your own recipes.

Check out the list below for the most common varieties of wheat berries and how they are used. Some are better for leavened or unleavened bread, some for brewing, some for pasta making, and some for lightly leavened baked goods.

Chart #1 Best Wheat Berries For Survival (12 Kinds)

Wheat For Barter

Wheat can be a cornerstone for a long-term survival skill or specialization in an SHTF situation. Bread-making, brewing, and fermenting are interconnected. In an SHTF situation, wheat berries can be the engine for your personal barter system.

Flavor Wheat vs Flour

Freshly milled flour is exponentially better tasting than store-bought bleached flour.

You can purchase artisan flours that are high quality and have excellent flavor, but no flour can compete with freshly milled stuff. The only way I can prove this is if you try it.

Moisture Content For Long-term Storage

When whole grains are still intact, they have a protective outer layer that makes them less susceptible to soaking up moisture than flour which is why they have such a long shelf life when properly packaged.

That said, all forms of wheat are spoiled by high moisture. Wheat has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs that are still edible after thousands of years. This is probably because it is such a dry location.

If you are storing wheat or flour in an area with high humidity, you’ll want to ensure that moisture doesn’t move in.

Warning: If you plan on storing wheat berries or flour in an oxygen-free container, they must be 10% or less in moisture content before storage. It’s a must because anaerobic bacteria like botulism could form. It’s rare, but it’s deadly.

Bugs In Wheat & Flour

This is a tie. Both berries and whole wheat grains may be infested with various bugs or bug eggs when you purchase them. This is one reason you must repackage dry goods before long-term, oxygen-free storage.

You may not be able to see eggs or pupae but they may be there, hidden and waiting to destroy your wheat.

How Do You Get Rid of Bugs In Wheat And Flour

When wheat, flour, or any other dry good is placed in an oxygen-free container, adult bugs, pupae, and eggs are killed within 2 weeks.

Avoid freezing bulk wheat berries and flour unless you have to because it increases moisture content and isn’t very effective at killing all species. It’s an outdated technique.

Oxidation In Long-term Storage

Wheat and flour both need to be protected from oxygen. Oxygen spoils food through a process called oxidation. This is one reason dried goods like wheat berries and flour are repackaged.

Dry foods packaged in an oxygen-free container are not degraded by oxidization. With the proper CC of oxygen absorber (2000cc for a 5-gallon bucket), all that is left in the container is nitrogen which doesn’t spoil food.

Light Oxidation In Long-Term Storage

Both wheat berries and flour are susceptible to oxidation by light, so it’s another tie. You’ll want to re-package both in an oxygen-free container that blocks light. Mylar bags and food-grade buckets both get the job done.

Tip: If you are storing wheat in clear glass or plastic containers, cover containers or store them in a dark pantry.

Heat In Long-term Storage

Heat will deteriorate just about anything, including flour and wheat berries. But neither product is as susceptible to heat as they are to moisture. You could experiment with storing these in a shed or garage if you don’t have severe fluctuations in temperature.

When I lived in Phoenix, my garage would reach 130 ° F. I kept all my SCUBA diving gear in the garage, which disintegrated. The same thing will happen to your wheat berries and flour if temperatures fluctuate too much.