Ta Da...I'm back, for the maybe two people who care....

I've discovered the most delightful book on bread baking. Not that I don't have lots of bread baking cookbooks, because I do. An embarrassing amount actually. Embarrassing in that once I discovered No need to Knead, I pretty much quit using the others. Why explore the wonderful world of bread baking when you can stir up fabulous, unfailing foccacia in mere minutes, and so on and so forth. There's also a dill pickle recipe in the book which is absolutely divine. Really. I'll never buy another Claussen....how does one spell that?

However, I decided that in my latest and greatest pursuit in pure wholesome ingredients, I would start buying wheat berries in 60 pound buckets and attach a massive hand operated grain mill (the burrs are 5 inches across- and yes, that does make my heart go pitter patter) to the dining room wall. I realize that this sounds slightly deranged. All right, very deranged, but really once you've had whole wheat bread made with freshly milled wheat--you'll be hugely disappointed and decide that white and unhealthy flour is the only way for you. It creates a heavy, dense, bitter loaf, more akin to an unfulfilled housewife 10 years after the last chick has left the nest than something upon which to spread room temperature impeccably fresh butter.

But that disappointment will only last until you open the pages of a heaven sent, divinely inspired volume titled Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads. Peter writes like a scientist, a bread baking enthusiast and an ardent lover of flour, yeast, and properly developed gluten strands. As I breathlessly turned the pages, he described precisely my defeats and failures surrounded by recipes and techniques developed using the white powdery substance sold under the name Gold Medal at the local grocery. And then he gave me hope with exact formulas, precise measurements in weight not just cups or tablespoons, and the assurance that even in the home kitchen, I could achieve magnificent loaves of bread from freshly milled grain.

And so I began, undaunted by a lengthy instructional stretching over a number of pages necessary to achieve that single loaf. Amongst the labor of Jon, Jonathan Jr., Caroline and myself, we produced the necessary milled flour, and I stirred up my biga and soaker accordingly. 48 hours later, there emerged from the oven and very promising fragrant loaf of golden happiness. I resisted the urge to slice into the hot loaf and we waited for it to cool completely. Ah, the flavor was AMAZING!

I doubled the recipe, taped the basic instructions to a cabinet door in the kitchen and began churning out two loaves a day with a biga and soaker in constant development. I discovered after a week that running the wheat mill was causing my arms to bulk up and my dresses were getting a bit tight in the arms--so that job has been relegated to Jon and Jonathan Jr.

The half dozen children who claim me as mother love this bread. It would be interesting to see how they would react if someone fed them bologna sandwiches on white bread. Gross. I cringe at the thought. :-)