THE ANCIENT ARTS
Living simply in the small mudbrick cottage next to the Murchison
Museum was the perfect context for the exploration of the ancient
art of baking bread. I found that the leaven makes a marvellous
pet. It sits in the fridge patiently for days on end until it is hauled
out to be ‘refreshed’ with rye flour and water the night before you
intend baking. It bubbles up in a very satisfying way, and when
healthy has an intoxicating, yeasty smell.
I quickly struck on the combination of the rye leaven with spelt
flour as the loaf of bread that ticked all the right boxes for my
taste and nutrition needs.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
If museums do anything, they connect you to the continuity of
human life and what we all share across the generations. They
also remind us of simpler, more wholesome ways of living. With
such influences at hand it was not surprising that I came to see I
needed a hand-operated stone grinder to mill my own flour, and
from there it was a small step to the idea of growing my own
grain. Emma mostly bakes her bread in the old wood-fired oven in
the shearer’s kitchen at Yuin; as a lover of fire, this too became a
component I wanted to throw into the mix.
I like to imagine that in a few generations the leaven brought from
the Murchison might still be making bread in Greenough.
21
Emma in her kitchen at Yuin Station