Are there substantial benefits to grinding your own flour? I've read that most of the nutrients of wheat are stripped for the sake of shelf life.  Is this marketing propaganda or is there truth behind it?  It was my impression that white flour (even fortified) is nowhere close to the original thing but whole grain flour is still pretty good.


The grinders are pretty pricy and after that even buying large amounts of grain (if you can find it) doesn't ever appear to pay off.  Am I mistaken?  
Are there any real benefits to doing it yourself (whether nutritional or not)?  
Does it taste as good?  (Sorry, I know this question is opinion-oriented, but I'm curious)
You're very correct the grinders are pretty pricey. I believe we paid about $300 for ours.

There are a few good reasons for me to have a grinder. Whether they are good reasons for you is your call.

1- I can grind whatever I want. Right now I am using hard white wheat. Unbleached, hard, white wheat flour is more expensive than your run-of-the-mill flour and comes in annoyingly small bags. I also grind beans, quinoa, oats, etc.

2- I can control the fineness of the grind. This is a minor thing but it is nice for me to be able to experiment with the texture of the product. In practice I usually leave it on the same setting but it is finer than the flour I can purchase.

3- Wheat flour is very perishable. I go through a fair bit of flour. As much as 200 oz in a heavy week. In order to have enough wheat flour on hand for a couple weeks it would have to live in the freezer. I don't want to waste that much freezer space. Whole wheat berries last almost indefinitely.

4- I like the flavor better. It tastes fresher and more nutty. This may be imagined- I haven't done any double blind tests. I should do that.

5- Cost- I had to do some of the maths as I don't usually pay a lot of attention to this.
King Arthur white wheat flour costs approximately $1.00 a lbs.

I buy 25lbs bags of bulk white wheat for $12-$15 or $0.50-$0.60 a pound.
If I use around 10 lbs of flour a week (usually a little less, it varies) I am saving about $5 a week. If you don't have access to wheat that cheap or don't make that much bread then of course the savings will be less.

As for nutrition- I read all the time that the nutrients in whole wheat flour degrade very quickly. I'm not a chemist but those results seem plausible to me based on how quickly the flour itself degrades in quality.