Making Bread

For the past few years I have made most of the bread that we eat and though to start with my loaves were a bit hit and miss, which could explain why my children were always keen to eat school lunches instead of taking sandwiches, I persisted and now there are only occasional comments about the weight of a loaf. I was buying my flour from the local miller, even though we grow tonnes of breadmaking quality wheat on the farm, so decided to try milling some of our own wheat. We use a handmill to grind up small amounts of wheat to test it for moisture but it takes such small quantities that it took an hour to grind enough for one loaf.  So that was a non starter. Then I found a beautiful wooden electric grain mill that grinds wheat at the press of a button, so now I make flour from the wheat that is grown on the farm.  I only grind flour as and when I need it, as the oil in the wheatgerm will make it go rancid if it is kept too long and from June I stop using our wheat as I worry that it will warm up too much and start going off. So after a summer of using bought white flour, this weekend I baked the first batch of bread using this year's wheat and it smelt delicious – just like harvest all over again. It tasted pretty good too.