Day 14 1/2

FLOUR ANYONE?

What a strange question you ask. Flour is in every grocery store you walk in to. Assorted sizes and varieties are lined up like soldiers on the shelves in the baking isle. Even convenience gas stations and dollar stores have flour! Well, since our blog is about the total journey, I thought I'd share with you what I as the baker have been doing while Tom has been building the oven.

When the BakeHouse was in New Jersey, the one aspect of getting our bread to the market that was most stressful was making sure we had a consistent supply of top quality flour. It sounds simple, but depending on where the baker is located dictates the level of stress.

Seems that our location in NJ put us just outside the distribution radius of the suppliers that I wanted to purchase flour from. So that forced us to have to become our own distributor. We purchased our flour in bulk from a big distribution center in MA and then we had to rent a cube van and travel to Newark, NJ to pick up our 3,500 lbs of flour at a time! Then I'd drive 60 miles back home and we'd spend the evening unloading, by hand, all the flour, take the truck back to the rental place and then home! Yikes.

Just before we left New Jersey for New Mexico, very dear friends of ours (Shout out to Glenn & Dawn in Blairstown, NJ) realized our plight and Glenn donated his time and truck and picked up, delivered and helped us unload flour. His business, a delivery company, was just around the corner from the warehouse in Newark that received our flour! What a blessing that was!

Here the flour supply was stacked - this photo is showing our
supply at about half of what we would order.

So as Tom is working on the oven, I've been spending hours on the phone with flour reps from various companies trying to secure our flour supply. Since bread is the only focus of the BakeHouse, the quality and consistency of the flour is of ultimate concern. And like New Jersey, it seems that Las Cruces, NM is also just outside the distribution radius of the flour company that I want purchase flour from.

Since our property and set up are located on a smaller footprint than in New Jersey, storing flour posses a new challenge. I'll be meeting with the Board of Health this Friday to go and look at a commercial storage unit in which I would store my bulk flour. 

What's great about talking to all the reps is that you find out what's going on in our country in regard to the wheat market.  We discuss how the wheat harvest will be affected by the weather, the economy and what is going on around the world. Wheat is so important in sustaining us  - it's has been from the beginning.

"Praise the LORD, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion! For He has strengthened the bars of your gates; He has blessed your children within you. He makes peace in your borders, and fills you with the finest wheat." (Psalm 147:12-14)

It's interesting when you're passionate about what you do - even though this part of the journey is stressful, it's not negative stress, it's sorta like the stress when you're training for an athletic event. You have good days and bad days, but you have the goal to focus on and that gives you the drive and determination to see it through.

I know that when we sell our first loaf of bread to our first Las Cruces Farm Market customer, my heart will swell with joy in knowing that my determination to get the best quality flour to bake our bread with will have been well worth the effort!

Thanks for checking in - thoughtfully - Kath