Of Grains, Rocks, And The Scourge of Marketing
I baked some more of what has become my go-to bread recipe a couple days ago, a smaller loaf for me for the week, as roomie is gone, and a large loaf for my local tumblr homie and her crew. I am just about to the end of the 25lbs of flour former roomie gifted me awhile back, from a mill in Minnesota, and I thought I would grind some of the wheat berries I bought earlier, about 3 cups, to make this half fresh-ground whole wheat, half all-purpose.
Got the bag of wheat berries out, with its "Farmer Bob" spiel and attractive (to somebody grinding their own flour? hellyeah!) packaging, and measured out three cups into the hopper of the mill, and plugged it in.
Things were great up until about the last half cup of grain, and suddenly the motor dragged waaaaay down, like it was about to die, so I ran to yank the cord out of the plug. Something had caught in there and was causing the motor to labor.
This was a head-scratcher, because (as documented here earlier) I'd disassembled and cleaned the mill to like-new condition. I would look into it after I got the bread made...I'd already gotten the milk to the right temp and couldn't tear the mill down. So there are only about 2 1/2 cups of fresh-ground flour in the two loaves:
I'm having a time finding the right blade to "slash" the loaves with...one always turns out wonky.
But it bakes up nice. The toast made with this has got the most incredibly delicate crunch to it, it's hard to describe.
And yes, they're lopsided because the seams didn't stay sealed and one side rises up higher than the other...kinda quasimodo loaves.
With just the 2 1/2 cups of fresh flour, the texture is white-bread soft, and the eggs, butter and milk in the dough itself give it that signature "delicate" crunch. You can slice this bread as thin as 3/8" with the right knife.
Once the bread was baked (and I had a day to recoup), I was able to tear down the mill again to figure out what the hell happened. Laid out some brown paper, took the flour bag off, and then took the two screws holding the front off, and a big pile of a mix of flour and grain fell down. Got my brush and cleaned all the parts of the mill and set it aside for a moment. Then I started to paw through that pile of grain to see if I could find anything. I did.
That's one big-ass rock (and it IS a rock), compared to the size of the wheat berries. But I also noticed something else. Lots of the little sticks and casings that the wheat berries come in, as well as just general debris and what I'd call "field trash", what I guess is "chaff".
Thought that was really strange, as I figured this guy or company would know how to CLEAN the grain before they package and sell it. Went back to Amazon to look at reviews of it, and the latest one mentions "product dirty, will not buy again". I fell for the marketing of "Farmer Bob"...(they even used the buzzphrase "vertically oriented company") but I, too, will NOT be buying any more grain from them.
I put the mill back together and plugged it in, and it fired up beautifully. Dodged a bullet with that one.
Which brings me to the other large-ish project involving the mill: I am unable to buy wheat berries in bulk with SNAP. I want to utilize this flour mill to its fullest, but without access to the four main types of wheat berries, CLEAN and in large enough quantities, it's just impossible.
Local folks who have had my baked goodies all rave. Between friends here on the Island and in Oakland, plus roomie's co-workers in SF, that's a sizeable number of people. They have to buy baked goods, since none of them bake regularly. A *SMALL* loaf of "Dave's Killer Bread" is now nearly ten bucks here.
My idea is to start a Wheatberry Co-Op, where everyone pitches in x number of $$ for wheat berries for a month, and gets x number of baked goods weekly for a month.
Example: the two loaves in this post contain a total of 7 cups of flour. Wheat berry to flour yield is 1-to-1: One cup berries = one cup flour. Just need to calculate how many cups of wheat berries are in a pound, and how many cups would be necessary to bake everyone a loaf a bread a week for four weeks.
And the different types of berries would be for different baked goods: soft white spring for cakes and pastries, hard red winter for bread. Once I can find a dependable source to buy from, I can grind whatever type of flour I need "on demand". You want a cake? We got a berry for that. You want bread? We got a berry for that.
So I figure things like this, once they've been thrown out there, tend to have a life of their own. People who are better than me at organizing other people and money can help with that aspect. I just wanna bake nice things for friends and have enough for myself, without endangering the SSI/SNAP.
This past year's been hard on all of us, but it has also given rise to a whole different group of friends who have all manner of talents and gifts that can be used to make all our lives better. If knowing you've got a loaf of bread, a couple dozen cookies and some blueberrie muffins for the kids makes your life easier, and all you had to do was pitch in $$ for the berries and ingredients, then that will make it worthwhile on my end as well as saving you food money.
It comes down to that whole "building community" thing. That has been the theme of these first seven months of this year. New connections becoming solidified, new ways of organizing.
It's "Old Hippie Co-Op Meets 21st Century Pragmatism".
I wanna bake groovy goodies. I know what I bake is healthier than any pre-baked thing you can get in a store...I know every ingredient that's in it, and I can pronounce all of them. If this is set up the way I imagine it, I could theoretically bake a variety of stuff 4 days a week and folks can pre-order on like Sunday, and drop by to pick up their goodies when they've been scheduled.
I know this could work...just need to get some other brains chewing on the details for a bit before we can set it in motion.
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