Tooldummy
12-25-2010, 08:14 AM
A friend of mine brought me a "mini" loaf of home made bread a while back that I have to tell you about. It was made the truly old fashioned way.
Here in the county we live there is an antique tractor club that puts on a show right across the road from my friends house. I went over to the show but missed the steam threshing event which was slated for the afternoon. My friend went over and watched it and noticed a pretty good pile of wheat after being threshed and asked about it. His neighbor, the event co-ordinator, told him he could have all he wanted. For you not so young threshing is a method of harvesting dating back to before the self propelled combines in use today. The wheat was cut by hand and tied into "shocks" or by a horse drawn machine that cut and tied the bundles into "shocks". It was then loaded on a wagon and taken to a "threshing" machine that was powered by a steam engine. So, what his bread consisted of was hand cut and shocked wheat that was threshed by an antique threshing machine powered by a steam powered engine and then ground with a hand grain grinder. It was very tasty.
Recently my family got interested in growing corn and grinding it. I'm an insulin dependent diabetic and my doctor strongly suggested I eat more whole grain products. So this summer I grew a large patch of indian corn. Although I'm an old former farmer I'm not big on all this genetically altered corn that is being grown and wanted something a little less modern. I had some excellent indian corn this year and since it is a version of open pollinated I can save my seed for this years crop. Indian corn has all kinds of different colors to it. Red, white, purple, black, and other colors. I use to feed hogs and believe me, they did much better on open pollinated corn and indian corn than hybred field corn. I ran across an old hand powered (antique) corn sheller at a flee market one morning and was able to buy it for $5.00. I had looked for a grain grinder on E-bay and found a similar one at a farm supply place for the same price $29.95 or about, but I could pick it up and save the freight.
We have ground corn meal and made some exceptionally good corn bread. The indian corn has flecks of red from the kernel, but when it is baked it kind of "bleeds" blue into the cornbread and makes it look like blue berries in the bread. It looks a little different is all, but tastes fine.
A farmer friend of mine had some wheat left over. Wheat is a grain that you can save your own seed from and replant for next years crop. There were no chemicals or treatments on this seed and he had a bag left over which he gave me. We have ground it with the hand mill also and made great pancakes. We are still trying to make whole wheat bread. It tastes fine, but is a little harder that we like and doesn't raise quite as nice as we would like, but we are still expereminting. She got a recipe off this forum and she is going to try it tomorrrow I think.
When I get a minute I'll post some pictures of the corn sheller and when my daughter gets some bread made I'll show you how it turned out.
Here in the county we live there is an antique tractor club that puts on a show right across the road from my friends house. I went over to the show but missed the steam threshing event which was slated for the afternoon. My friend went over and watched it and noticed a pretty good pile of wheat after being threshed and asked about it. His neighbor, the event co-ordinator, told him he could have all he wanted. For you not so young threshing is a method of harvesting dating back to before the self propelled combines in use today. The wheat was cut by hand and tied into "shocks" or by a horse drawn machine that cut and tied the bundles into "shocks". It was then loaded on a wagon and taken to a "threshing" machine that was powered by a steam engine. So, what his bread consisted of was hand cut and shocked wheat that was threshed by an antique threshing machine powered by a steam powered engine and then ground with a hand grain grinder. It was very tasty.
Recently my family got interested in growing corn and grinding it. I'm an insulin dependent diabetic and my doctor strongly suggested I eat more whole grain products. So this summer I grew a large patch of indian corn. Although I'm an old former farmer I'm not big on all this genetically altered corn that is being grown and wanted something a little less modern. I had some excellent indian corn this year and since it is a version of open pollinated I can save my seed for this years crop. Indian corn has all kinds of different colors to it. Red, white, purple, black, and other colors. I use to feed hogs and believe me, they did much better on open pollinated corn and indian corn than hybred field corn. I ran across an old hand powered (antique) corn sheller at a flee market one morning and was able to buy it for $5.00. I had looked for a grain grinder on E-bay and found a similar one at a farm supply place for the same price $29.95 or about, but I could pick it up and save the freight.
We have ground corn meal and made some exceptionally good corn bread. The indian corn has flecks of red from the kernel, but when it is baked it kind of "bleeds" blue into the cornbread and makes it look like blue berries in the bread. It looks a little different is all, but tastes fine.
A farmer friend of mine had some wheat left over. Wheat is a grain that you can save your own seed from and replant for next years crop. There were no chemicals or treatments on this seed and he had a bag left over which he gave me. We have ground it with the hand mill also and made great pancakes. We are still trying to make whole wheat bread. It tastes fine, but is a little harder that we like and doesn't raise quite as nice as we would like, but we are still expereminting. She got a recipe off this forum and she is going to try it tomorrrow I think.
When I get a minute I'll post some pictures of the corn sheller and when my daughter gets some bread made I'll show you how it turned out.