Because I bake so much from scratch, I use quite a bit of flour.  One day I decided it was time to get a big ol’ bag of flour to reduce the number of times I was running out to buy more.  I ordered a 50 lb bag of organic wheat flour and when it arrived I picked it up and began wondering where I would store all the flour.  As I carried the bag into the kitchen, I suddenly realized it was making noise and that was when I looked more carefully at the bag.  I hadn’t ordered flour.  I had ordered a 50 lb bag of wheat.

Without a mill, what was I going to do with 50 lbs of wheat?

Santa had the answer!

For Christmas, he gave me a Wondermill!!!!!!

With my mill set up and my 50 lb bag of wheat, I was ready to grind some wheat into flour.

The Wondermill, is easy to operate and is very fast.  Within seconds, I had several cups of flour ready and waiting.  So I got out the bread machine, put all the ingredients in, set it up and hit start.

I know it seems strange that I’m breaking out my bread machine to make bread from my freshly ground wheat that I was able to grind using a machine that plugs into a wall.  I never claimed to be an old-fashioned homesteader in the making.  I’m more a 21st century homesteader in the making 🙂

2:20 later, I was ready to pull the dough out of the bread machine.

Now please let me clarify.  My bread machine can mix and bake, but I don’t like the shape of the bread that comes out of the machine.  So I pull out the dough, form it into a loaf and put it in my loaf pan to do the last rise before baking.

My excitement was building as I opened the lid and then the excitement can crashing down.  The dough was more the consistency of a thick batter, which easily poured into the loaf pan.  There was no shaping involved.  Just a thick glob of dough that filled the loaf pan.

Still, I was determined to see if it would rise again, so I covered it and let it sit on the stove.

Unfortunately, it didn’t rise like it should, but I still put it in the oven to bake.

Even in the oven, it didn’t rise.

I took it out of the loaf pan, put it on a rack to cool, covered it with a towel and went to bed.

This morning I sliced off a piece and put it in the toaster.  A little butter and it was quite tasty.

My research tells me that freshly ground wheat absorbs liquids differently from wheat that was ground and allowed to sit on a shelf for a couple of months.  But I’m not going to allow that little detail from attempting to make a loaf of bread, from freshly ground wheat.  More research and more attempts will eventually provide my family a properly risen loaf of tasty bread.