Wheat, flour, bread

For thousands of years, bread has been a staple food product for people all over the world. Scores of different grains have been harvested and ground in some form or another to create a flour with which bread can be made. With the augment of the bakery evolving into the industrial food industry, the art of grinding whole wheat flour and baking fresh bread soon was lost, first to the wealthier class and finally to all but a few.

We recently purchased some different kinds of grains and a grain mill so that we could try to make our own breads and noodles. Rachel has tried a few different recipes, using different varietes of wheat, with some working well and others not working so well. I have yet to try my hand at making a loaf, although I hope too soon.

There are a lot of steps required to turn wheat into bread. It first has to be harvested and then the kernels need to taken from the stalk. The kernels then need to be ground into a flour. Our ancestors took a handful of stalks and beat them upon ground to separate the kernels from the head. The kernels were then ground by hand, simply by beating the wheat with a stone, which was first operated by hand until the stone mill was invented.

We chose a more modern method - we bought a Bosch Grain mill that utilizes an electric current! Some of the kneading can be done by the Kithcen Aid. After the dough is ready, we put it in an electric stove and bake it until its fragrance demands that we take it out! (Now that we can fancy ourselves to be fine agrarian bakers, we have to admit that our skills are made possible by the power lines outside!)

The kernel consists of three parts, the bran, the germ, and the endosperm. All three parts have a specific nutrient function. Bread available commercially typically uses white flour, which is made specifically of the endosperm. The governments mandatory enrichment program insists in adding back some of the nutrients that are lost, but there can be no denying that a loaf of bread made out of whole wheat flour is more nutritious and more flavorful. The dawning of the of commercial food production is actually a rather interesting study. We invented so many "helpful" techniques in commercializing the production of foods that it was noticed in the 20's and 30's that people were suffering from poor nutrition. The government finally determined that they had better step in an require certain food products, like flour and milk, to be enriched.

There was a time when bread baking was a staple part of the domestic life. It's fascinating to observe that in our age of knowledge and information that most of us have no idea how to turn a kernel of wheat into a loaf of bread. Most of us don't have the time to take to make it. We load up with bread from the super market, with its plastic wrapping and 100 ingredients that are difficult to pronounce.

Last Saturday, the house smelled of fresh bread. Three of the four loaves are pictured above. I fear that they have somehow mysteriously disappeared!