Every Recipe Has A Story

Now that bread is about 3 bucks a loaf, and much more if you like the rustic artisanal variety, it is time to try baking your own. It costs only about 35 to 50 cents a loaf to bake your own and it is way better for you. Buy stone ground whole wheat flour , as it contains the wheat germ - natural vitamins and minerals. The heat generated by steel rollers in the milling process for non stone ground flours destroys the germ.

I've been doing it for about ten years - mostly using my Great Aunt Sophia's recipe for whole wheat loaves, which includes stone ground whole wheat flour, unbleached white flour, scalded milk, a little brown sugar and molasses, salt, vinegar, oil, wheat germ, and some oatmeal, and of course yeast. If you understand the chemistry of bread baking you could make it from that list of ingredients.

Last night I made rye with whole wheat and white flour loaves. Dang it's good. It is hearty, nutty, earthy, with a nice crunchy crust and a soft chewy crumb( interior). The more you chew the more flavor you get. That is called depth of flavor.I used water. It is cheaper than milk.It was the first time I ever made rye bread. Also, it was the first time I ever sprayed the loaves w/ water before baking and a couple of times during the baking process. That's how you get the artisanal crusty exterior. Do it. It works.

In the old logging days around Floodwood( Gowan), there was large Finnish woman who worked in the woods as a lumberjack. She was a close friend of my Great Aunt Sophia. She baked similar loaves of bread, but this story has little to do w/ bread except for the nourishment and strength that she gained from eating it. It allowed her to compete on a level playing field with the men.

Balsam sap was a well known balm or dressing for an axe wound in the woods. It had antiseptic and adhesive qualities. It would glue the wound together and help it to heal. You didn't have to lose work time in the woods. You could keep on cutting wood. Every lumber jack knew about it.

It was on a day not unlike many others that Mary entered the woods, except for on that day she was a little more inflamed than usual with her chronic condition. As the sun rose higher , so did the sap in the maple and the balsam; as did as the burning and the pain of her hemorrhoids. It finally became unbearable.

Initially,it worked, this balsam sap; it was cool and it relieved the pain. Though not the tallest tree in the woods, it was almost immediately that Mary experienced the other property of balsam sap, the adhesive quality, and realized that she had made a mistake. She had glued her butt hairs together.

It was much later than usual that evening that Mary paid a visit to Sophia and explained her recent situation, the dilemma, and her failed solution. " I couldn't walk," she explained," and I had to crawl out of the woods. Don't tell anyone," she said.