Not wanting "organic" bread

[smilingcat]

The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic
Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses


The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming


The Backyard Homestead

And if you do a search for "backyard homestead" on amazon, you will find many more books on intensive farming technique in an urban setting.

Our growing technique isn't pure "organic" since the soil on my property is depleted. Depleted of nitrogen, potassium, phospor, sulfur, magnesium, and all the other trace elements. We do have an active composting going to help with the soil rehab. We have no choice. We use chemical fertilizer.

Useless lawn has been torn out and replaced with diverse selection of plants. Most are not native to this area .

There was an interesting article in recent Mother Earth News. An urban homesteader in Pasadena. Every inch of his property with exception of his house was used to grow food. Several thousand pounds of vegetable, fruits nuts ... per year.

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When I go to the farmers market, I find out where they are from and buy "local" This could mean 80 miles away. We used to buy farm eggs, interesting blue-ish color, to tan to brown egg shells. small chicken, butchered looked like a black silkie... to bison meat. Not sure how local it is. Might be 300 miles from the market.

You will not find banana, mango and like at california farmers market. Only items allowed are the items grown by the farmer is the way how I understand it. The LAW!!

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As for organic bread, never occured to me that some would consider hard crust as being stale. Isn't that the point of baugette? But having it explained, makes sense. Just tad odd to me.

[GLC1968]

I'm not sure if this is the family in Pasedena you are referrring to, but this place is amazing (and pretty much a legend in the 'homesteading' world). Something like 3 tons of veggies from a 1/10th of an acre or something...

http://www.pathtofreedom.com/

[channlluv]

I try to buy local, too, when I can, but being in a major metropolitan area where local actually does include northern Mexico, it's kind of hard to know what's safe and what's fudgy on the great slide scale of organic squishiness.

smilingcat - when I read your post I had a flashback of reading something once upon a time that molasses was used as an additive to irrigation systems to restore the minerals in farm soil. I wonder if that might help your yield and replete your soil.

I love crusty whole grain bread - someone called it artisan bread, and I didn't know that it was low-gluten and all that until I read it on this board. Interesting stuff. Now I'm looking for it every time I go shopping as there is a new Trader Joe's on the way home from my favorite bike workout. Woohoo!

Of course, I'm supposed to be off wheat to test for a wheat allergy that might be hanging up the weight loss effort, but getting off wheat is h-a-r-d. For me, at least.

Susan, how are you milling your own grains? I've got a small coffee grinder that I've used for grinding millet and flax, but after that, I don't know much what to do with it. The one bread I tried didn't taste very good, alas.

Do you have a good recipe for millet and flax bread?

Roxy

[malkin]

There'a a banana farm in Ventura CA.

[OakLeaf]

The bakers of the really good millet bread keep their process a deep, dark secret, but I've heard it rumored that it's a sourdough process (so it's not truly yeast-free). I haven't got around to trying that yet. Rice flour is a main ingredient as well. (Also, it's processed on equipment shared with wheat bread, so although I can tolerate it well, it's not suitable for a challenge diet or for most people with celiac.)

Although the commercial bread lists flours, not whole grains, in the ingredient list, I think my next attempt will be to soak, grind and ferment whole millet and rice. That should eliminate some or all of the bitterness of the millet.

[smilingcat]

I'm not sure if this is the family in Pasedena you are referrring to, but this place is amazing (and pretty much a legend in the 'homesteading' world). Something like 3 tons of veggies from a 1/10th of an acre or something...

http://www.pathtofreedom.com/

YES!!

Wow!! such wonderful video you dug up. Yes, his action made us rethink of our garden. And thus our reason for tearing out our lawn.

I'll post more on the garden thread.