This is where I begin the story of how to make bread. The yoke on the top was strapped between two oxen, who tilled the field. The farmers would then walk through the fields to sew seed, casting the tiny plants like chicken feed to cover the soil. Once the wheat was grown, the farmer would use a sickle, at the center of the frame, to chop through the stalk of the plant. Once all the wheat was cut and lying on the field, the platform on wheels at the bottom left would be strapped to an ox and run through the field. The teeth in the wheels would cut the wheat into smaller pieces. Once the wheat was cut very small, a farmer would rake it into piles. In order to begin the next step of separating the edible wheat from the chaff, the farmers would wait for a certain wind to blow, usually in the late afternoon in the fall. When this gentle wind would blow down the through the hills and mountains, the farmers would use the rakes and then the pallets to scoop mounds of wheat into the air. At that moment of suspension, the lightest parts of the plant would be carried with the wind and what was left was only the wheat that would be used for flour.
The mill is completely and has always been completely water-powered. The river that flows through town is diverted to the mill, where it is split three ways to power the mills and to power the old bakery.
The wheat gathered from the fields would be siphoned into the wooden caraffe at the top, make its way through the straw and enter the wooden chamber, where two 1,300 kilo stones would grind the wheat into flour.
The smell of fresh flour is grassy and surprisingly sweet. The bread that we made from the flour in this picture smelled and tasted similarly.
This is one of the two grinding stones, exposed, with the tools used in its maintenance demonstrated as well. The teeth carved into the stones needed to be redrawn often not just to catch and grind the wheat efficiently, but also to prevent the two stones from rubbing against each other, heating up and burning the flour.
One destination for the diverted water was the mill that powered this machine - a KitchenAid of yore. The large, black metal bowl
This sweet old man is Juan, to whom I attribute the quote at the end of this page. Him and his son Francisco run the mill today, maintaining it in the same tradition as their family has for many generations, and opening it to the public to teach people about something which used to be so basic and essential to life in El Bosque and everywhere - how to make bread.
This trip was most impressionable on me because I got to talk to Spaniards about my hopes and interests in preserving food culture and the importance of traditional, simple, local products. This family understood the importance of what they do and were proud to welcome us in and show us how to make bread.They were the most welcoming and open people I've encountered in Spain so far not unlike the people I've had the luck of meeting in Nandasmo and Niquinohomo, Nicaragua, and Tahoe City and Bodega.
I guess there are good people everywhere, and what I've learned so far is that you never know when you'll meet them or where.
This is the bread I made - it was a peace sign before it got baked. When the bread was put away to rise, we had a break of about 2 hours to go to town. As a group of us congregated at the entrance to wait the next move, Juan walked up and asked me if I liked Sherry. I told him I did, so he got a glass and walked up to a barrell I hadn't noticed by the door and poured me a glass of oloroso, a type of sherry with a lot of residual sugar and a higher alcohol content. Although the alcohol was more prominent than in the other sherries I had tasted, this one was balanced by the sweetness of the grapes' sugar molecules left unfermented after the wine-making process. He goes to Jerez especially to buy this sherry from a small bodega called El Maestro Sierra. When our tour-leader, Rafa, came up to see why we weren't following the group, he just laughed at Juan, who by then had served up at least 7 glasses of sherry to anyone that was nearby.
I promised Juan I would come back, and he responded that even if he wasn't there, the mill would be, and that that was what mattered. Then he spontaneously recited a poem to a group of us, which I am still trying to find online, and told us that people pass through life like the wind, but that the most important part of life are the people.
