Ma Ingalls would be so proud

Hello, friends-and-relations,
yes, we are all still alive.  Still inside.  Going stir crazy.  Along with everyone else.  Last week the Powers That Be promised that everything would start opening up on Friday, and then oh big surprise changed their minds mid-week and extended our solitary confinement sentence by another two weeks, dashing all our hopes that this will ever come to an end.  I have no idea what day it is anymore.  All I know is that when the milk runs low I go shopping and try to buy whatever is left in the stores.

Enough complaining.  At least Mr. Pickles is still allowed to work, so we can still buy books and eat.

...in that order.

I know a lot of people have been planting pandemic gardens -- that sounds like it requires way too much energy.  We're still homesteading in our own way though. 

Behold!

that would be 45 lbs of hard red organic wheat

A few months ago a friend told me about how some health issues she'd been suffering through were miraculously relieved by eating homemade bread from her own freshly ground wheat, and I thought hey why not?  We've got nothing to lose -- if the allergic people in the house end up not being able to eat it, we're no worse off than before.  It's actually cheaper than the good stuff at the store, plus with the added benefit of having all the nutrients still in it since nothing needed to be removed to keep it shelf-stable.  So in the name of Science I joined a co-op and ordered a bucketful.

I started by grinding the grain in a regular ol' blender, which was very loud and took a while.  Then Mr. Pickles very kindly bought me a grain mill which is much more efficient.

It's from China, so figuring out the attempted English translation of the instructions was entertaining.


Here are the results from my first loaf:

behold, the Bread Brick!

I followed the bread machine's recommended recipe for whole wheat bread.  It was very very dense.  I think 3c. of whole wheat flour need a little more than one tsp of yeast, n'est-ce pas?

Next batch, using recipe from my friend (and 3 times the amount of yeast):

voila!  too much yeast though; it fell at some point during rising

the texture was perfectly light, though

I adjusted the amount of yeast again and have finally hit on the perfectly textured loaf. 


And the final verdict?

Mr. Pickles and Miriam can eat it!  Not too much at a time, but they're not suffering the reactions they normally would from eating wheat.  Whew! 

It also tastes so amazingly good, I wish I could make some for you all.  It's good and hearty and makes awesome toast.  The crust is a little dark, but I think that's more of a bread machine issue than a fault of the wheat.

So, yeah.  I grind my own flour now.