And the winner is ....plus the story of a young girl, a miller
Chers Lectours! (Dear Readers!) It’s Almost Spring..
If you’ve arrived from Instagram, thank you for checking out my website. Merci beaucoup for your love of creating journeys, food, fires, enlightenment, travel, and of course, bread.
Next! I’m so excited to get started with the contest and giveaway for The Official Companion Cookbook: The Bread of Dreams, Recipes and Portraits of the Mistresses of Psomi into your hands. (And your hands on the Bread of Dreams.)
Last month I asked you to vote on your favorite bread recipe from the book, and the winner was, is …. a tie!
Oh no!
Ancienne Madame Bouquin's Taboon Breads and the Apple Tree - a soft flatbread pressed with chopped field herbs and apples. traditionally made in a tabun, or tandoori oven.
Or
Young Perpetua's Manaqish Bil-Kishk in Maman's wood-fired oven - this smoky pizza dough combines “grano d’arso” and white flour topped with kishk, a Middle Eastern preparation of bulghur wheat and dried yogurt. Perpetua adds roasted eggplant, onions, and tomatoes to the kishk for a complex topping.
By March 20th, please vote!
And now onto millers and rye.
…Many many years ago, I did preliminary and extensive and neverending research on writing the story of a young girl bread apprentice. There was no google and the internet was not really eating solid food yet, if you know what I mean.
But there were people to talk to, and at the Berks County Historical Society I bent the ear, or to be fair, ears, of Kimberly and Lisa. I don’t know if they are still there, but they were then and that’s all that matters. They helped me find this intriguing story of a young girl miller in Pennsylvania. She was the most accomplished and at that time, the only woman miller, and rye miller at that.
What drove her to devote herself to learning the craft of being a miller? It seems fair to wonder if she herself was the stone grinding on the mostly, male held occupation of being a miller. At that time. She is no longer the only woman miller around. And in fact there is a woman miller right here in North Carolina, Jennifer Lapidus of Carolina Ground in Asheville. But more on that in the coming weeks of the contest!
Have you ever driven by an old mill? At one time this was pretty common. There were tons of old mills in existence, check out some of them at this website, including the Grist Mill at Hereford. This excerpt is from the 1994 publication of the Berks County Historical Society’s book, The Passing Scene, written and compiled by George M. Meiser, Ix and Gloria Jean Meiser
Pennsburg Town and Country, Saturday, February 28, 1903
Berks County Girl operates a Grist Mill at Hereford
“From time in memorial the millstone has been a rugged type of the great grain-grinding industry; but the remaining mills where rye is ground on millstones and flour made on this principle are few indeed. One of these quaint institutions stands near the headwaters of the Perkiomen creek, and is operated by a girl 17 years of age, the only woman in the United States who follows the trade of a rye flour miller.
This mill stands on the west bank of the Perkiomen, near Hereford, Berks County, and is operated by Sallie R. Treichler, daughter of David G. Treichler, proprietor of the mill. While the operator of the mill is quite young, the concern under her charge has stood for nearly a century, and has been operated by her ancestors for three generations.
Miss Treichler has operated the mill entirely alone for the last year, getting occasional assistance from her brother only when unloading the rye and loading the flour.
She is an early riser, trudges at dawn from the farm house nearby to the mill, and works constantly all day, and sometimes way into the starry night, when the markets for flour are booming. The mill is equipped with several grinding stones; she often runs them all, grinding at the same time corn, wheat and oats, for the neighboring farmers.
Miss Treichler is strong, and to hoist a three-bushel sackful of rye to the third floor of her mill is considered by her an easy task; the 100-pound bags of rye flour are also readily gathered by her from the reel and transferred to the scale, weighed and sowed, ready for transportation; the huge grinding stones are lifted by the aid of screw pins to a height, which permits her to recut with a chisel and hammer the radiating grooves whenever necessary, and in short she is a typical miller in all respects, except possibly in the matter of dress.
German bakers are her principal patrons, and many a loaf from her flour is cut into slices in the saloons and served as lunch with a glass of lager beer.
Miss Treichler has, indeed, thoroughly mastered her trade, and standing before the reel and thrusting her hand in the snowy mixture of flour, she can feel the texture and instantly judge the quality of her flour. if it does not come to the standard grade she instantly regulates the machinery, which will make a finer or coarser grade, as desired. When water is plenty, the capacity of the mill is about 2,000 pounds every ten hours.
Miss Treichler, although born on the farm, has been around this mill since childhood, and the work is very natural to her - and more familiar, too, than many household duties, of the work usually done on the farm by a farmer's daughter.”
I’ve come to understand that the mill stood a short distance behind the old hotel at Hereford Village. In the summer of 1978, I got married, and Treichler’s Mill was razed, but at the time of this 1994 publication, the miller’s residence still stood across the road.
In 1994, I was deeply living in North Carolina and baking so many breads. My boys were young and eating everything. They were busy like bread in a warm kitchen, growing and learning in that time that was such a rich experience.
A rich experience of mixing, waiting, kneading, shaping, baking, and then, finally then, the aroma of hot loaves coming out of the oven, and cooling on the counter. Whichever counter it was. I was looking for connection, the camaraderie of making bread, this was what I was searching for. Whether it was the professional side of baking, or the home side. This was well before the rise of sourdough all across the nation, and before the terms of artisanal and heirloom and ancient and locally milled were words thrown into the bowl, fed, and stirred.
In my upcoming companion cookbook, The Bread of Dreams, I have an alluring stuffing for Roman duck, a wonderful savory dish which uses rye berries. But before rye berries there was Laramie, Wyoming and Black Rye Bread.
The story of this recipe traces the season of rye. It began with my Swedish friend, Helena. We both lived in married student housing in Laramie, Wyoming in the late 70’s.
We met because our husbands enjoyed hunting - and then we both ended up working at Ivinson Memorial Hospital in the kitchen.
The light was fantastic in June in Wyoming and the evenings, long.
It was summer and our husbands were off on the Burlington Northern Railroad, working.
Helena did quite a bit of the baking in the Ivinson Memorial kitchen, and in 1979-1980 everything was still baked in house! I am so thrilled, still amazed at the notion that there was so much activity. I wish I could share a picture into the life of this hospital kitchen as it was. Helena and her crew made dream bars, rolls, and breads! I loved sneaking to the back of the kitchen, and bringing her a cup of coffee.
My work as the main evening cook, often brought me into the dietician's office for careful scrutiny. Thankfully it only for an hour or so while she was still on her feet and patrolling the kitchen. If you’ve ever seen the movie Trolls, you are familiar with the Chef character. This character depiction suits the dietician to a T. I love watching Trolls with my grandaughter, Izzy. And yet at that time there was no Trolls movie, only Helena’s and my imagination as we hooted and laughed ourselves silly over the Dietician’s antics when we got back to married student housing.
Working in that hospital kitchen was a world of fun and yet all sorts of mayhem and drama ensued with the dietician over recipes, and whether I had followed them. Or not. I’d like to make clear that this disagreement was only over the seasonings or cooking methods for dishes on the regular diet menu. I never changed anything regarding the special diets; like the low sodium and low fat diets. Still, I don’t think that a bit of oregano could hurt the tomato sauces that dressed the spaghetti for either of those diets either.
But I digress, back to bread and in particular, black rye bread.
One day when we both had off Helena brought over her limpa recipe to our little apartment and I dug out Nana’s recipe for german rye bread.
With the kitchen door open to the backyard of the student housing development, we stared out on "prairie dog town." We made the dough, and let it rise, it took all day and as we waited, we told each other stories of family and bread.
Helena’s bright red hair and demeanor were exuberant and charming companions in both kitchens; at home, and at the hospital where I worked with her.
The resulting loaf is excellent company to light spring soups of peas and swiss chard, as well as salads of new potatoes, scallions and grilled knackwurst.
Black Rye Bread with Orange and Caraway
3/4 cup rye flour
5-6 cups whole wheat flour
1-2 cups unbleached bread flour
3 T active dry yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 T molasses
1 1/2 cups lukewarm strong coffee
2 tablespoons dutch-process cocoa
2 tablespoons softened unsalted butter
1/2 cup molasses
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cold mashed potatoes
zest of 1 orange
1-2 teaspoons crushed caraway seeds
1 egg, beaten with a bit of water for egg wash
Begin by mixing the yeast with 1/2 cup lukewarm water and 1 tablespoon of molasses.
In another bowl mix the rye and the whole wheat flour, and salt.
In another mix the coffee, cocoa, butter, molasses, mashed potatoes, orange and caraway seeds together. It should be on the thinner side.
Gradually combine the two mixtures, by adding the dry into the wet. Knead the resulting stiff dough with your hands until it feels elastic and springy and contains air bubbles, maybe about 10 minutes.
Sprinkle the dough with the bread flour and leave it for 4 hours in
a warm, but not too warm, place. It should rise slowly until it's doubled in bulk.
Divide the dough in two, and shape them into rounds.
Place on a greased baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal.
Cover with a towel and let the loaves rise again until doubled.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Glaze the tops of the loaves with the egg wash.
Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350, and bake for
another 25 minutes.
Tap the bottom of the loaf, if it sounds hollow, the bread is done. You can also check the internal temp of the loaf. It should be between 180 and 200 degrees fahrenheit.
It may be trying to do so, but leave cool completely if you can. Then slice and butter. Serve. Leftovers are even better when toasted and served with muenster cheese and gherkins. Watch out for Trolls!