I just baked bread again for the first time in years. It's something I used to do on a daily basis, and I had forgotten the pleasure and calmness that comes from kneading a perfect ball of dough, over and over, feeling it become light and elastic. The reasons I stopped doing it on a regular basis are many: I got too busy, I was freaked out by frankenwheat, and then my household went no carb, and even though I craved it, I didn't make it.
Last week a friend gave me a bag of "Jovial inherently good 100% organic einkorn all purpose flour. Nature's original wheat, and the ONLY one never hybridized. Unbleached and unbromated, a healthy alternative to modern wheat. Product of Italy." Italy. That's a sad state of affairs when someone living out in the country in the United States of America has to get her wheat to make bread from Italy because our food is, with government complicity and sanction, poisoned.
And here's the other sad state of affairs. That bread is AWFUL. I am talking horrible-taste-in-your-mouth-that-you-are-willing-to-chase-with-just-about-anything awful.
But here's what I learned. Making bread is a great pleasure. There is such a centering and balancing that happens from kneading a ball of dough. It's like centering clay on a potter's wheel. It is grounding and well, centering. So the wheat had to be bad, it had to be. It cannot be that healthy wheat tastes that bad naturally. There was only water, wheat, yeast and a little salt and it was dreadful. But the chickens liked it.
Last week a friend gave me a bag of "Jovial inherently good 100% organic einkorn all purpose flour. Nature's original wheat, and the ONLY one never hybridized. Unbleached and unbromated, a healthy alternative to modern wheat. Product of Italy." Italy. That's a sad state of affairs when someone living out in the country in the United States of America has to get her wheat to make bread from Italy because our food is, with government complicity and sanction, poisoned.
And here's the other sad state of affairs. That bread is AWFUL. I am talking horrible-taste-in-your-mouth-that-you-are-willing-to-chase-with-just-about-anything awful.
But here's what I learned. Making bread is a great pleasure. There is such a centering and balancing that happens from kneading a ball of dough. It's like centering clay on a potter's wheel. It is grounding and well, centering. So the wheat had to be bad, it had to be. It cannot be that healthy wheat tastes that bad naturally. There was only water, wheat, yeast and a little salt and it was dreadful. But the chickens liked it.
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