Staff of Yumminess

I've never been that much into bread, and when I was into going to the gym I was eating what I thought was all low-carb anyway (in actual fact I was still consuming loads, I think I found it easier to cut out the 'good' carbs...) . I remember telling my mother in law that I don't think grains even have a place in our diets (I was getting into paleolithic territory there). Well, I've come a full swing - vitamin E is REALLY hard to get from any other source, unless you take a supplement, and on the whole I'm not impressed with supplements the more I discover.

Anyway, buying organic sourdough bread has changed my tastes. It is such a different product to supermarket 'white lite' or whatever. Um, um! Sonoma bread is divine. (http://www.sonoma.com.au/), and my second favourite was this sprouted bread I ate over in the USA (http://www.food-for-life.com/index.asp - their tortillas are just amazing, I brought as many packs back with me to Australia as I thought would be allowed, kicking myself now because I could have brought a whole lot more, like 10 kg.. can't get Ezekiel breads here.)

I don't much like the sprouted bread blocks you get here in Australia, they're OK once in a while but honestly a bit gummy don't you think! And I worry about mould - I've had more than one block of that stuff go mouldy in patches before I've opened it even, which makes me wonder about the mould you can't see (aflatoxins are potent carcinogens)... But sourdough is the best IMO. Should really have an 18hr fermentation time to break down the phytate content of the grains (they're substances that bind all the vitamins etc so you can't absorb them) , so I don't know if Sonoma does that, I know they do it for at least a few hours though. But YUM @ their breads. My other concern with them is whether the flour is completely wholemeal. I think they use a mix of white flour and wholemeal, and I would rather not eat any white flour after reading 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration'. May as well be eating blocks of refined sugar.

Then there was this article that I read: http://www.eap.mcgill.ca/Publications/EAP35.htm which made me think about milling my own grain. I think it's the way to go, seems to preserve the most nutrients. Nutrient losses in flour begin only 2 hours after the grinding, with whole grains able to be stored for 18 months with only minimal nutrient losses (although I wouldn't store that long if possible, because even then it is the Vitamin E affected, and I want that).

So I ordered a grain mill on Tuesday from retsel.com.au. I had ordered the Uni Ark but the guy rang me up and said the Lil Ark is a better choice for someone who wants to use it all the time because it's more stable as it has two legs that can be clamped, so when you turn the handle to mill, it doesn't wobble around. He said some people like the Uni Ark just as a back-up for if the power goes out and they're used to that design... I would have been surprised that they rang me up and perhaps even suspicious if I hadn't previously bought a manual wheatgrass juicer which has only one leg clamp (and wobbles a bit). So I agreed that he could send me the Lil Ark instead. It was $279.50 total (including postage).

I had just run out of all flour too, so perfect timing, although because the mill hasn't arrived yet I had to buy 1 kg of flour because tomorrow I have to bake a cake for Andy's little brother's birthday (I volunteered). A kilo will go fast anyway. I suppose I should start tonight so I can do some kind of a sourdough cake. I've seen some recipes for them, never really tried yet. Means I will probably have to start tonight. Lucky the flour is being delivered along with my groceries this afternoon.

I've made my own sourdough bread before which uses only 3 ingredients: water, sea salt & flour. It involves making a starter porridge which you leave to ferment on the bench for a week or so, then you mix in more flour, sea salt and water and form a dough, knead it and leave it to rise at room temperature for hours and hours and then eventually you can bake it. The first few batches turn out pretty pathetic looking really (although nice flavour still), and they don't rise much. Then on the fourth batch (each time saving a handful of dough (BEFORE BAKING, DUH) and putting into a container to save it for up to a week) you get a gorgeous loaf of delicious sourdough bread with that wonderful sourdough texture/taste. So in other words, don't expect to be able to go away and make a nice batch of sourdough without some thought, preparation and lots of time and patience.

My other experience was that it was easy to forget to keep a handful of dough and I forgot on the 6th loaf I made and lost my starter, which was tragic for me and I was most upset. Then when I tried to start over again I had different flour, which I had bought out of a flour-bin at a health food style store, and after 3 days it smelt BAD, and I mean bad. I think it mustn't have been fresh flour and so mould must have formed rather than the lactic acid bacteria and natural yeasts. It never went how it was supposed to and I had to throw it out.

So I can't wait to try again, this time with freshly milled flour, which takes the guess work out of how fresh it might be. It was really delicious, almost as good as Sonoma, but not quite. I guess I'll have to get a wood fired oven next. http://www.alforno.com.au/the-wood-oven.php has some awesome ones. Or maybe I'll just buy some plans (much cheaper) and build my own (http://www.ovencrafters.net/catalog.htm#cat , which you can buy from http://sourdough.com.au/shop/index.php?cPath=1_25 in Australia, for about $110).