This bread is a gift to yourself, your family, and your health. Find a way for it to fit into your routine unobtrusively, so that it can bring you pleasure instead of extra stress.
‘There’s a right way to cook wheat so that it doesn’t make you sick: sourdough. Bread made with a sourdough or leaven (starter) is a fermented food and it’s the oldest way to create your daily loaf. Sure, it takes time, but it’s not your time.
‘I use rye flour in my sourdough because it’s low in gluten, highly nutritious, high in wild yeasts (making it very easy and quick to get your starter active) and you can use it to raise loaves made with flours from other grains, such as wheat and spelt. My favourite would have to be an all-rye sourdough. The best bread book I ever found was Andrew Whitley’s Bread Matters. It’s a beautiful book about a beautiful subject.’
1 October 2010
Chucking with rain today, the sky covered with an austere white fog. It’s gone cold – feeling more like winter all the time. I took the children to school this morning, came back and gratefully crawled back into bed, curling up against Rich’s warm back – he had the day off from work. He got up to milk the goats later, and brought me back a cup of tea. I drank it propped up in bed, looking out at the misty mountain that stretches outside the window, just before the sea.
We’re continuing to do things that mark the onset of the cold season – including arranging to sweep out the chimney of the wood burner. For kindling, we burn the scraps of wood that Rich brings home from his work as a harp maker. For the bigger logs, we have stocks that Rich has cut from our woodlands, at the bottom of the sloping fields.
The woodlands lurk at the edge of the farm, full of mystery, and plants that the goats like to nibble. On a fine day, when we let them out of their stalls after feeding and milking them, our little herd will bound down the hill, jumping and bouncing sideways, and disappear as a group into the woods.
Goats are really browsers, not grazers – they prefer to eat leaves, and bark, and pieces of even the sharpest and most inhospitable trees – holly and gorse. Amazing that their mouths are so soft, and yet they can ingest things that I can’t handle without gloves.
It’s a strange thing with the goat’s cheese. For a while, I was turning out successful batch after successful batch. It was great. People were buying it (well, giving me donations in exchange for it). Just friends, and people around the office. It was pretty good stuff.
And then – bang. Suddenly the batches started going wrong, and I haven’t been able to make a successful batch since. I altered everything I could think of – bought new rennet, made a new batch of starter. Nothing. Instead of a dense, grainy texture, the cheese would be too fluffy, or rubbery, with strange holes. I’ve pored through my books without any luck. Now I wonder if I’m actually the worst cheese maker in the world.
And the really sad thing is, I keep trying. Batch after batch. I fail each time, and miserably pour the results into the pig bucket. I’m not sure why I don’t give up. I’ve got a batch sitting on the table now. I should go and turn it, but I can’t bear to see what I’m bound to see when I do.
I’ll have to phone Margaret Grant, the doyenne of the goat club. She and her husband Ian have been keeping goats for 40 years, and she’s been making cheese for most of that time. We bought our beautiful white British Saanen goat, Glenda the Good (herd name Kattern Gwenlan), from the Grants, and what the Grants don’t know about goats and goat’s cheese isn’t worth knowing. I’ll ask them to come round and tell me what I’m doing wrong.
4 October 2010
Since I’m doing so poorly with my cheese making as a way to use the goat’s milk, I thought I’d turn my attention back to goat’s milk kefir. I’ve learned that kefir is a fermented milk that’s very like yogurt, but with a stronger probiotic effect. Yogurt has ‘transient’ bacteria that only help you while they’re in your digestive system – they get killed off by the digestive process, so you have to keep eating it. Kefir, on the other hand, is so powerful that it actually permanently repopulates your gut with good flora and fauna.
All I know is that goat’s milk kefir makes brilliant smoothies, and that Benji is never happier than when he’s blending up frozen fruit and bananas and homemade goat’s milk kefir into a milk shake.
After finding such interesting information about sourdough starter online, I thought I’d look up the history of kefir. Apparently it’s one of the oldest cultured milk products in existence, originating in the Caucasus Mountains in Eurasia.
Kefir grains are mysterious little white things that look a bit like small cauliflowers. They’re not actual grains, like wheat grains, but instead small colonies of microbiotics – beneficial yeasts and bacteria. They are living, and actually grow and multiply, so if you have a batch, it’ll soon grow large enough that you can divide it and give some to a friend.
Oddly, no-one seems to know where the first kefir grain came from. But what we do know is that when you put kefir grains into milk, and leave it to ferment over 48 hours at room temperature, the resulting drink – similar to buttermilk in taste and consistency – is one of the most powerful probiotics available.
The people who live on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains say that Muhammad gave kefir grains to the Orthodox people, and taught them how to make kefir. These ‘Grains of the Prophet’ were jealously guarded, since it was believed that they would lose their strength if they were given away and the secret of how to use them became common knowledge.
Traditionally, kefir was made from cow’s or goat’s milk, in animal-hide sacks. The kefir sacks were hung in the sun during the day, and brought back into the house at night, where they were hung by the door. Everyone who entered or left the house was expected to prod the sack with their foot to mix the contents. As kefir was removed, more fresh milk was added, making the fermentation process continuous.
Kefir grains were considered part of the wealth of family and tribe, something to be cherished and passed on from generation to generation. So for centuries the people of the northern Caucasus hoarded their kefir and cultivated it, without sharing it with outsiders. Other people occasionally heard strange tales of this unusual beverage, which was said to have magical properties; Marco Polo mentions kefir in the chronicles of his travels in the East. But for centuries, kefir was largely forgotten outside the Caucasus.
How to Make Drinking Kefir
1 packet of kefir grains (luckily for us, these are now easily available online!)
1 litre (1¾ pints) of fresh milk (we use raw goat’s milk, but any type will do).
Put the kefir grains in a clean 1-litre (1¾-pint) container with a lid (a Kilner jar is perfect) and cover them with the milk. Don’t use a metal container, and be careful with plastic, because the kefir is acidic (the plastic tubs used for yogurt are fine).
Sit at room temperature for 8–12 hours. More if you’d prefer a stronger, fizzier or thicker kefir. The kefir may separate. That’s okay – just shake it up!
Strain the grains out of the mixture with a plastic (not metal) strainer. The resultant strained liquid is your drinking kefir.
Then rinse the kefir grains with some fresh milk, and return them to a clean container. Cover with milk again. Remember that your kefir is a living thing. Properly cared for, it will live as long as you do.
Feed it milk to keep it alive. If it uses up all the available milk, it’ll starve. If you go away or don’t need your kefir for a while, put it in the fridge, where it’ll go to sleep! When you’re ready for it again, simply put it back on the kitchen worktop at room temperature.
In its unflavoured state, kefir is quite acidic – like a fizzy natural yogurt. We like to blend it up with ripe bananas, vanilla, organic sugar and avocado for a super-smoothie. Don’t use honey to sweeten it, though – as honey is naturally antibiotic it will interfere with the probiotics in the kefir.
Until news spread of its use in sanatoria for the treatment of tuberculosis, and its efficacy in the healing of intes
tinal and stomach diseases. Russian doctors believed that kefir was beneficial for health, and the first scientific studies were published at the end of the 19th century. But scientific investigation was hampered by the fact that kefir was so difficult to obtain. Commercial production simply wasn’t possible, without first obtaining a source of the grains.
The members of the All Russian Physician’s Society were determined to find a source for the kefir grains – in order to make kefir available to their patients – so they sent a beautiful young woman named Irina Sakharova to the court of a Caucasian prince, Bek-Mirza Barchorov. Irina was instructed to charm the prince, and persuade him to give her some of the kefir grains. The prince was very taken with Irina, but his fear of retribution for violating religious law was stronger than his lust – he refused to give her any of the ‘Grains of the Prophet’.
Realizing that their mission had failed, Irina and her party departed for the Russian spa city of Kislovodsk. But halfway home, they were taken captive by armed mountain tribesmen, who seized Irina and took her back to Prince Bek-Mirza Barchorov. It was a local custom to steal a bride – and Irina was told to prepare to marry the prince.
The Russian government mounted a daring rescue mission and saved Irina from her forced marriage just in time. The matter was brought in front of the Tsar, who ruled that the prince must give Irina 4.5kg (10lb) of the precious grains in recompense for the insults she’d endured.
The kefir grains were taken in triumph to the Moscow Dairy, and in September 1908, the first bottles of kefir drink were offered for sale in Moscow. Commercial manufacture of kefir began on a large scale in Russia in the 1930s. And in 1973 the minister of the food industry of the Soviet Union sent a letter to Irina Sakharova, now an old woman, to thank her for bringing kefir to the Russian people.
Today kefir is the most popular fermented milk drink in Russia – the Russians consume an average of 4.5kg (10lb) of it per person, per year. Kefir is also made on a commercial scale in the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, some of the former Soviet Union states, Denmark, the USA, France, Germany, Canada and parts of Southeast Asia. It’s been used to help IBS, eczema, allergies, acne, and auto-immune disorders, and some researchers have even tested it against tumours.
And to think that I have a bottle of the grains in my refrigerator right now! I was able to order some online. They came in a tiny plastic packet – but quickly doubled and then doubled again as I used them.
7 October 2010
A nondescript, greyish day today. Not really cold enough to justify making a morning fire, and not wet enough to skulk inside. The day before yesterday it was nearly icy, and I did make a fire in the wood burner, and then did my stretches in front of it, luxuriating in the heat. I kept the fire going for much of the morning, periodically feeding pieces of wood into the heavy black metal stove.
As I pulled the kindling out of the feed sack, it struck me how similar this process is to the others I have going at the moment: feed wood into the fire; strain the kefir grains out of the goat’s milk kefir, and feed it fresh milk; water the herbs that I’ve started, from cuttings taken from other herbs. And when I make my sourdough starter, which I’m hoping to do today, I’ll be feeding the starter with fresh flour and water, to keep it going.
All these things – the kefir, the starter, the herbs – replicate themselves, as only living things can do. Once started, they can recreate themselves indefinitely, given some care. They’re linked in a cycle of perpetual growth and rebirth – and they link me into that cycle, as well.
It’s Rich’s perthyn again, I think, but on a whole different level. We’ve been talking about perthyn as it applies to family, and to a community. This is perthyn on a microscopic level, with the tiny living organisms that ferment the goat’s milk kefir and leaven the bread. They are alive, so they need to feed. And you can only have a relationship with things that are alive.
Maybe it comes down to that, in the end. I want my food to be alive – and I want to have a relationship with it. I feed my food, before it feeds me.
We often wonder what we’re doing here, trying to be self-sufficient. After all, we’ll never truly be ‘off the grid’ – we use electricity, and computers, and diesel for the cars and tractors. We don’t come close to producing all of our own fruit and vegetables. And even the things that I can make – bread, jam, cheese (well, sort of!) – I don’t make all the time.
Shop-bought bread is easier for sandwiches. Cheddar cheese melts better than goat’s cheese. And so we buy the things that we need. The things that we make for ourselves are almost extra – luxury items.
But I think, for me, it’s not about trying to pull away from society or save money. I simply want more of a quality of aliveness in my life.
Sure, I can buy tomatoes wrapped in plastic from the shop. But when I plant a tomato seed, feed it with compost from our sheep, water it with water from our spring, pinch out the side shoots, watch over it and talk to it and rejoice when it flowers, wait for the small green fruit to ripen, and finally, after many weeks, with infinite satisfaction, twist it gently off the stem – that’s not a tomato; that’s a relationship. It’s a real and enduring passion, as real as any love affair. Put it in your mouth and bite down on the sweet, explosive burst of tomato-ness – that’s not food. That’s a feast.
20 October 2010
I went away to Amsterdam for work, and when I returned something terrible happened. I’m not even sure what it was.
I work with an old comrade and friend from California, who kindly rescued me and gave me a job after I walked out on my abusive ex-husband, with my two small children in tow. I was, at the time, homeless and unemployed and stranded in a strange country. The lifeline that Peter threw me was the one thing that enabled me to survive and support my kids. I was desperately grateful to him.
Peter’s company, Stand & Deliver, is based in California, and he sends teams of trainers all over the world to do lightning-fast presentation trainings. We work in two- or three-day chunks, once a month, flying into an airport, going directly to a hotel, working 12-hour days and then flying home.
The work is interesting, adrenaline-charged and completely intellectual, and a million miles from the slow, steady warmth of the farm. The rooms where I work are illuminated by over-bright lights, the hotels luxurious but strangely sterile, and the airports marvels of arid plastic and steel.
I love what I do, although this time I was more riddled with guilt than usual at leaving my family and the farm. It’s too much to leave on Rich’s shoulders – the double school run, his own work, the animals to be fed and milked twice a day, the shopping, the cooking. It’s a two-person gig, and, for me to bow out for an entire week and leave him on his own with it seems horribly unfair.
But we needed the money. The farm, with all its rich resonance, doesn’t produce an income, and feeding 11 goats, two calves, two pigs and 24 sheep doesn’t come cheap. So after much discussion, we agreed that I would do the job.
I was gone for five days. I worked hard and well – successfully coaching some executives – fell into bed exhausted at the end of the overstimulating days, and then returned. There were welcome-home banners on the windows of the farmhouse, and I handed out the duty-free chocolates I’d bought at the airport. It should have all been fine.
But something was wrong. For days after I came home, I felt crippled by the most overwhelming despair. Suddenly, nothing meant anything.
I remembered all the projects that had engaged me so completely – the sourdough, the yogurt, the goat’s milk kefir – and I couldn’t remember why it was worth bothering with them. I was tired, surely? But it was more than that – it felt as if everything was too much trouble, like there was no point. I couldn’t find a way back in.
It was as if some corrosive acid had been poured over thousands of small and fragile root tendrils that were creeping their way across a wall, linking things together. And all the root filaments had shrivel
led, disappeared. My tiny farm projects were no match for the devastating cold of the outside world, with its weight of ambition, speed and lethal competition.
Who cared about sourdough? There were careers to be made, battles to be fought and won – and it’s difficult to argue the merits of goat’s milk kefir with someone who has to give a presentation to the CEO the next day.
It might have been hormones – it might have been fatigue. All I knew is that when I left, the room of my life was warm and brightly lit – and when I came back, it was as if the lights had been turned out. Same room, but all dark.
I fought down the edges of panic and carried on. Slept as much as I could, waiting for the flavour and savour of life to return. Did the rounds, fed the animals, marked the calendar, trudged through the school run.
The to-do list was frightening – all the things that had been undone while I was away, plus the expenses and summation and invoice that needed to be generated for the work trip just completed. A book deal was falling apart. My parents wanted to take one grandchild on holiday, and leave the other three at home. Everywhere I turned, everything seemed like the most impossible mess.
Yesterday, I got up knowing that I had a million things to do. Taid’s birthday is coming up – we’re planning to have the entire family round on Saturday. Gifts had to be purchased and a meal planned. An urgent work assignment needed completing.
But first, I had to feed and milk the animals. And unlike executives, there’s no negotiating with animals. Sighing, I pushed my unwilling feet into my wellies, pulled on my waterproof trousers and trudged outside.
The sunlight was dappling the rough grey stone of the building across the farmyard from the house. Water poured from the mouth of the stone lion fountain. There was an edge to the breeze, and two red-tailed kites, among those carefully nurtured back from the edge of extinction, soared and dipped over the muted blue of the sea.
Secrets from Chuckling Goat Page 6