The Grain Mill

I have often wonder what it would be like to produce your own bread from scratch, and I don't mean go to the store, buy flour and then toss the stuff together, make dough and bake it up. I mean grow some grain, clean it, grind it and then make bread, or at least a grain product. Ya, ya, I still had to buy the yeast or baking powder.

The reason I became interested is bread is the staff of life, so to speak, and if we really had to make it from home grown plants how hard would that be? I did a little looking around to see if I could find flour made in Wisconsin but only found one small gentrified, crafty, trendy, yuppified mill that had flour, and it was not cheap----particularly after having it shipped. I was in a nice bag fir for display.

It turns out most flour is apparently produced along ways away, like in Omaha or Minneapolis. I don't really know but it was hundreds of miles. That is not very local, and I want to be local. The first thing I did was round up a grain mill on Ebay for a herbal-kerbal hefty price. I didn't want to grind it with mortar and pestle. I wanted a mongo motor that could be run off my photovoltaics. Power form the sun and lots of it. Its a monster and if I could run it off that old gas engine , I would really think I was the cat's ass.

I then managed to by some local hard, red wheat, the type commonly used in making bread. I dumped the stuff on the stones in the grinder and bingo, I got this flour, but it is not flour like the store has. It is not white nor really fine, it is brown, maybe a little course, but still floury, maybe like what would have been typical at the time of Christ. I also ground some multicolored Indian corn I had grown in the garden. It is not genetically modified unless the Mandans did it. I ended up with a bag of each and was noticeably proud of myself----puffed up like a toad if you will.

I decided to go for corn bread using baking powder. I tossed in some salt, local butter, local milk, eggs form our chickens and some olive oil (virgin but not from around here). I probably should have used shortening from hogs but I am well-meaning but not pure.

I cooked it up and there it was, a nice corn bread almost local in nature. It was a course item but consumable and probably Michelle Obama healthy. Interestingly, not totally easy nor quick to make. This local stuff is not a picnic, me thinks. Not even Christ like.