When I was growing up, our mother baked bread nearly every week. Her usual recipe yielded six loaves, which was the maximum that could be baked at one time in the oven that she had. For years, she hauled freshly ground flour from her sister’s farm located about 100 miles north of where we lived. Our uncle had a small flour mill and ground the hard red winter wheat that they grew for their family’s use and for a few relatives. Later, our mother obtained her own flour mill and started grinding her flour freshly each week. She kept her flour, and later the unground wheat, in a 30-gallon galvanized steel garbage can. The can could be washed out, did not rust, was water tight, and mouse proof. Our house had an enclosed front porch that was not heated and the porch provided a safe place for the can. At times there were two cans that were used as canisters, one for flour and the other for more coarsely ground wheat which was used for hot cereal.

When I was newly married and we had moved off to Chicago, I baked the bread that we ate. I would pick up buckets of flour, reusing two gallon ice cream containers when we visited home. The rest of the time we would purchase 25-pound sacks of flour at our local grocery store. At times, during our seminary years, I would bake for our family and two others, making up to 9 loaves some weeks. It really isn’t much harder to make large batches of bread and I learned to control the speed with which the bread rose by using the oven to proof the first batch of loaves while the others rose slowly away from a heat source, giving myself timing to bake in two batches from one large dough.

Over the years, I have baked more or less depending on how busy my life has been. There have been many years that I was doing very little baking. One of my goals in retirement was to return to baking. I like the flavor of home made bread and enjoy the process of mixing, kneading, proofing, and baking. I like to rise early in the morning and often can have the process well underway before Susan wakes. With our son and his family right down the road, I usually bake three loaves, sending one to their family and keeping two for our use. When I have a little time, I will bake ahead and like to have a few loaves in the freezer for weeks when we are traveling or when life gets busy. I don’t produce quite enough to keep us from purchasing bread from the store, but I am currently baking most of the bread we use and a weekly loaf for our grandchildren to have for after school snacks and an occasional lunch.

One of the challenges for me has been to find sources of flour. I’m used to the high quality fresh organic flour that came from our uncle’s farm. I can purchase comparable quality flour from our local food cooperative, but it is a pricy. Last fall we helped my sister move from Montana to Oregon. In the process she was downsizing in a similar manner to the downsizing that we had done when we moved from South Dakota to Washington. Like us, the lure of living close to her children and her granddaughter made the move attractive. As part of her downsizing, she decided to get rid of four food grade six gallon buckets with screw in lids that she was using to store flour, sugar, rice, and coffee. I volunteered to take the buckets. They have been in our garage since we got them. Last week when we were in Montana, I stopped by an organic bakery that was supported by local farmers including my cousin and picked up a 50 pound sack of flour. I finally had a safe place to store the flour.

On Thursday, I had the first opportunity to bake from the new flour. What a joy to have such wonderful flour. The buckets make measuring the flour simple. I can use a one-cup measuring cup as a scoop and level the excess right back into the bucket. It is a lot easier than having to pour flour into smaller canisters or 1-gallon glass jars and a lot cleaner than trying to scoop from a paper bag. My bread recipe is simple. All I need is flour, water, yeast, honey, and a bit of butter. I can purchase yeast in a reasonable quantity from a local source, and I have friends who are bee keepers from whom I can purchase honey. Next fall I hope that the bees we will keep on the farm will produce enough honey that we will no longer have to purchase additional honey. As far as I know, there is no plan to keep a dairy cow on the farm, so we’ll continue to purchase butter from the store.

Having the ability to safely store 50 pounds of flour seems like a great luxury. If I needed to, I could easily increase my batch and bake all of the bread for our family and for our son’s family each week. With my new stock of flour, I am tempted to occasionally bake six instead of three loaves just to have a bit of reserve.

We are not “preppers,” and we certainly don’t have a huge pantry, but we do live 10 miles from a supermarket and the local market in our community is little more than a convenience store. It makes sense for us to have staples on hand so that we can make meals without having to run to the store each day. We have a deep freeze in the garage and the farm keeps us supplied with beef and chicken, so keeping a well-stocked pantry, including baking supplies, just makes sense.

I am surprised and pleased at how good it feels to me to be able to have a supply of flour on hand, safely stored. I feel like I can bake whenever we want fresh bread. It really makes our house feel like a home to me.