FarmerMillerBaker

Meet Amy Halloran

I met Amy Halloran’s book about 10 minutes before I met Amy. I arrived at the Grain Gathering last summer, and with a few moments to spare before a bread-baking session, I wandered over to the book tent. What’s new in the world of baking? I wondered as my fingers brushed over the myriad volumes filled with recipes and techniques. Then I stopped. I was peering down at a copy of The New Bread Basket, and this book seemed completely different. A soft-covered, thin-spined book that featured a photo of stalks of grain rather than finished loaves of bread, … Read more

Stone Punk Diary by Rob Salvino

The second time I met Clif Leir he was covered in dust and taking a break from grinding grooves into a thirty-inch round piece of pink grey granite. The granite was to become the bottom stone of a flour mill he was building for a friend. When assembled and operating, wheat would travel in the grooves—known as furrows—and get sheared into progressively smaller pieces by the top stone that rotated over the bottom stone. Building the mill was precise, hard work—the type of work that I sensed Clif loved to do. The first time I met Clif was at … Read more

Sunlight, Seed, and Soil

Understanding new visions of FARMING grain There was a time when I didn’t think much about flour. Sure, it was one of those pervasive ingredients that appeared regularly, but beyond lifting it off the grocery store shelves, I didn’t ponder this silky white powder. I just measured it out and that was that. It was a backbone, but mostly I just saw it as a blank slate. It always seemed so inert in and of itself, kind of like a drab little wallflower that had some prospect for pizazz if you knew how to nudge her the right way. … Read more