First bread with Mendocino Grain Project flour

I received my 20-year-old sourdough culture in the mail a few weeks ago, but I hadn't made the time to bake bread with it.  My friend asked if we could bake bread together, so I brought the starter to their house.  The only bread-making cookbook around is the notorious, well-respected, and formidable Tartine Bread book.  I figured that if they knew how to use a starter well, it'd be them.  

The book clearly lays out all the steps in great detail, like having a mentor who's not terribly didactic.  I used our Red Fife and Triticale for the whole wheat and King Arthur for the all-purpose flour.  Our Dutch Oven is a bit too small, so transferring the bread to the pan was a slippery disaster, but no one was burned!  After 12 hours of rising dough and falling hopes, I had two steamy loaves.

Button

Inny

Outy

You can see that the gluten didn't form properly and that too much moisture remained in the bread when it was taken out.  It's also possible that the dough was too moist from the start, since the texture didn't match the photos.  It acted like it rose enough, particularly during its free-form sit.

I'll try again soon.

Sonora Harvest

Best seat in the house

John in the Hopper, Doug in the Driver's Seat

John the Magician

John and Jay

Some areas were thin

Red tailed Hawks

Oregon smoke in the air

Doug, Maria, and John

Field Plots at Front Porch Farm

The California Wheat Association funded a project to test the viability of heirloom wheat varieties in three Northern California locations: Shively, Healdsburg, and Marin.  We went to Healdsburg to harvest the grains at Front Porch Farm's test plots.

Turkey Red didn't come up, but it was interesting to learn that a winter wheat that is planted in the spring will sprout a few heads of grain.  Those heads can be harvested and planted in the spring because they adapted to the late planting.  That is part of how we have Red Fife through Canada and Foisy through Oregon.

Turkey Red: Fail

John LaBoyteaux of Humboldt explaining adaptive wheats

Winter Turkey Red turned Spring

Front Porch Farm Elegant Lady Peach -- Yum!

Test plots

Lentils

Harvesting with Hege

We went to harvest today because forecasts predicted some rain.  The ripest of the crop at this point are the lentils.  Alas, the lentil plants were short and close to the ground, so we harvested pounds of dirt along with the few lentils that hadn't dropped.  Wild radish and morning glories choked out many of the lentils, making up a plurality of collected material.  After a full day of sitting on a combine in the hot, humid heat, Doug declared the lentils a crop failure. 

Lentil and Weed Cohabitation

Sad salad

Close-up of this awful salad

Solar drying

Ripe lentil plant

French green

Green (I know they don't look green, but that's the type!)

We received a tip to till or disk a shallow layer before planting, thereby disturbing the layer the lentils will grow in and exposing weed seeds.  Then, we're to propagate the weeds by watering them, only to mow them once they've grown.  That way the seed will be used up without creating more seeds.  Too bad all the other seeds will last 50-100 years.

Red Fife and Marquis Harvest

Red Fife field

Red Fife

Combine head in the Marquis

Me driving the combine

We harvested nearly a ton of Red Fife and a wagon full of Marquis.  Red Fife and Marquis are both hard red wheats, which make for full, nutty whole wheat breads.  Red Fife is thought to originally be from the Ukraine and brought through Scotland to Ontario, Canada, where it became popular.  Marquis is a cross between Red Fife and Hard Calcutta.  We figured that we'd keep our harvest in the family.

A wealth of information about Red Fife and Marquis can be found on this page written up by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.