Home Baked Bread
This year we finally reached the elusive goal of creating our own
bread. I had almost lost interest in this activity then along came
John Jeavons preaching the benefits of carbon crops and tossing out
statistics on home much grain can be grown in a small garden bed.
It sounded too easy and i was skeptical. Still, we had never tried to
grow a loaf of bread and it would be better to have some experience
before discarding Jeavon's ideas.
So, i ordered some wheat from Jeavon's and planted it the way he
recommended. We already had a wheat grinder and often baked our
own bread so this should be easy.
Well... it was not easy! The growing part went smoothly but then
along came harvest time. I soon learned what was meant by the old
expression "separating the wheat from the chaff". Our 4x8 garden bed
produced about 4 cups of wheat and 50 cups of chaff. For someone
without experience and limited equipment the job of threshing and
winnowing wheat is formidable.
We have now tried amaranth, wheat, rye, corn, buckwheat and barley.
Each has it own unique set of problems. All things considered i'm
still convinced small farmers are the best source for grain. They
have the equipment and experience. The bigger problem with grain is
that it is over-processed and few people connect with farmers or
grain.
My proof of this is in the answers to these questions:
1. How many grocery stores sell bags of grain?
2. How many homes have grain grinders?
3. Where is the local grain outlet?
4. How often do we hear about the advantages of
buying whole grains?
5. Does your spell checking think winnowing is
a mispelled word?
jeff
