I feel a bit like a pioneer...

I used my wheat grinder for the first time yesterday. It is an old 1970s Garden Way grain mill that my mother gave me when she got a better, more modern one, but you know, it works great!! I decided to haul it out of the garage because of a book that my sister got me for my birthday. It is a book all about making rustic, old world breads (yum), and one of the big points that the author makes is the importance of using stone ground whole wheat flour - the old-fashioned way. Well, my old-fashioned grain mill does actually use grinding stone, so that was the easy part!! I needed to feed my sourdough starter yesterday, so I decided to try out the recipe for basic sourdough from the book. The first step - preparing the starter - took 8 hours (mostly of waiting), then I ground the flour and mixed it all up. There were only 4 ingredients; flour, water, salt and starter. Simple, but effective. Then there were 2 rising steps, shaping into loaves, for which I used the baguette pan Rina got me, and then the baking!! Here's how they looked fresh from the oven.

They were a little more dense than we are accustomed to, but the flavor was amazing! I usually put all sorts of "extra" stuff in my bread to give it more flavor, but apparently all I've really needed was really good flour. A good lesson to learn. I may never buy flour again. Now I just need a calico dress and bonnet and I'm ready to trek across the plains - provided there is room service...