Bread

The main staple of our diet is wheat (no gluten allergies here, thank goodness!) and with that comes bread. We buy whole wheat* in 25-50 lb. bags (one or two years' supply at a time) and I grind a small bucket full into flour every week or two. I have a handy, lightweight KitchenMill electric grinder which makes short work of the task. Every other week I make 4 loaves of 100% whole wheat bread--no white flour added--and that is what we eat for lunch. Obviously it's more work than simply buying a loaf at the store (though I do have a big mixer that makes it a lot easier than doing it completely by hand), but have you ever looked at all the ingredients in a store-bought loaf? Do you even know what all those ingredients are? Homemade is definitely healthier! As Michael Pollan reminds us in his fabulous book In Defense of Food, the more ingredients a food product has, the farther away from nature it is and the less healthy for our bodies. My recipe (which is my mom's) has 5 ingredients, not counting the water. And it's so delicious, my family never gets tired of it!

*We used hard red wheat for years but are now firmly converted to hard white wheat. It's lighter in color, which gives baked goods a prettier, more appealing appearance, and it allows for better raising so baked goods aren't as dense or flat. And it has just as much nutrition and fiber as red, so what's not to like?!