{life with a curious and crazy 13 yr old}
D has been helping out in the kitchen, getting her hands floury, learning some fun new skills. And the baker has been navigating the humidity levels and weather changes, trying out new breads and finessing previous projects (developing a recipe for both naturally-leavened/fully-fermented and large-scale is quite a process). Homeschool at its finest — following a recipe, measuring, calculating, mixing, packaging, baking, selling, and delivering.
And the baker never hesitates to nerd out on the particulars — the history of levain, the behavior of starter/bread/the ovens, the recuperation of wheat in Maine, life before (and after) refrigeration, the problems with commercial wheat (drying with glyphosate) and the health-misunderstandings of gluten (again, primarily glyphosate and secondary, our high inflammation lifestyles/lack of physical lives, far down the line is the actual inability to process gluten proteins — for most, it is the monocultured simplified structures of white flour, the chemical processing on all levels, and the baker’s yeast which retards beneficial enzymes = the lack of living food in our diets).
I step in for the socio-political, anthropological, and philosophy of bread (From Scott Nearing to Pyotr Kropotkin, Helen Todd to Nietzsche, Peter Schumann to Victor Hugo), hearths (and the suppression of womyn, burned as witches in their own kitchens), self-sufficiency and guild-communities, economy and ecology of, and the importance of feeding the mind as well as the body.
She’s learning skills, both in thinking and doing. Handshaping, rattan basket, pan loaves, pizza doughs. She’s going to be working in the back at least one to two days a week now, earning her keep. Just to get inspired, she’s currently baking 2-Bite Apple Pies. mmmmm…
Rock Bottom Homestead 