Seventh-Year Land Sabbath and Bread Baking Tips (Live Coaching Call)

Melissa: Hey, pioneers. Welcome to episode number 380. On today's episode, we are going to be talking about consistent bread baking, aka, how to get good bread every single time, as well as the science behind land Sabbaths. Now, you might be thinking, hmm, I'm intrigued by both of these topics, but I'm interested how they came to be together in one episode. And that is because today you are getting to listen into one of the live coaching calls that I am doing with Britnay, who is a member of the Pioneering Today Academy. You are going to really enjoy this episode, I think, because there is a lot of good food for thought as well as some very interesting things, well, around baking good bread, of course. But if you're like, okay, I have conquered bread baking, I think you're really going to enjoy when we get to the section where we're talking about the science behind land Sabbaths.

Especially if you're like, hmm, what is a land Sabbath? I'm intrigued by what that actually is. Or you've heard about it, but you've never actually heard the science behind it. Maybe you've only heard it from a biblical context. We're going to dive into all of that today, and this is a super fun episode. Now, if you want to check out the blog post where we'll be linking to some of the resources and things that we're talking about in this episode, of course you can do that by going to melissaknorris.com/380. That's just the numerical 380 because this is episode number 380. Okay, let's dive into our live coaching session with Britnay. Well, Britnay, welcome to the Pioneering Today Podcast.

Britnay: Hi.

Melissa: Hello. I'm happy to have you on today and I'm actually excited. Well, I'm always excited, but some of the topics that you brought up to talk today and go through have been, especially the second one, has been one that I was also very curious about. The research on that was really intriguing and I find it very fascinating, so I'm excited to talk about that one. But I have here that one of the things that is your major goal, and you can let me know if this is still true, is to get real bread that is not bricks or crumbs.

Britnay: Yeah. Yep.

Melissa: Yep. Okay.

Britnay: That's my specialty.

Melissa: That's your specialty. Well, I know you're not alone in that. So first off, kind of walk me through what type of bread you're making right now, like sourdough, fresh ground, that type of thing, and then the issues. And then we'll try to work through those.

Britnay: Right now I'm using the whole wheat store bought flour, and that bread is coming out perfect like 99% of the time, but I wanted to start using freshly ground hard white wheat, and that's where my problems are coming from. So I'm like, oh, this is interesting. I know it takes a little bit longer for it to absorb some of the liquid, but I have yet to come out with a single loaf of bread that actually is edible.

Melissa: Okay, well, you're not alone in that because moving to fresh ground flour, even if you're using store bought whole wheat like you have, what I want anybody listening to this, because if they have tried it or they're looking to move into using fresh ground flour, there is definitely a learning curve and it's not just subbing in the different flour types. So you're not alone in it and it can be very frustrating. But first off, so when you're using the fresh ground... And kudos that you're using the hard white wheat because for bread, that is exactly what you do want to be using because of the gluten contents in the hard white wheat as well as the protein. So that part you have right. That's really good because some people will try to use the soft not realizing that that is suited for your pastry type items and is not going to work as well for bread. So you've got that part right. So when you're using that, is it too dense? How is it not really edible? What's the end result that you're getting?

Britnay: Typically, it has a giant crater on the inside, and around that little crater it's really doughy. And then the outside is hard as a rock. Sometimes I'll have it to where I'll have a tiny little hole in the center, but as soon as I cut it, it just crumbles into pieces.

Melissa: And then it's too dry. Okay. All righty.

Britnay: I like [inaudible 00:05:00].

Melissa: Okay. Well, you can have a lot of breadcrumbs, but that's not your goal when you want nice sliceable bread, I know. Okay, so when you're making the dough, kind of walk me through how you're creating the bread dough. Walk me through your process there.

Britnay: After I grind the flour down, I measure it because I'm usually using a recipe that makes two loaves. So I'll start off with about seven or eight cups of flour, and I'll add one cup at a time when I'm mixing it together, and I'll keep an eye on the consistency. So if it starts to stick together, but it's not when I pinch it with my fingers, I'll start doing that. But it seems like it's still a little bit wet, so I'll just add maybe half a cup at that point and just continue spinning. And then once it starts to hold together, I'll take it out of my KitchenAid mixer and then I'll mold it by hand and just add a little bit of flour as I need to. Now that's where I tend to run into problems. Sometimes I add too much flour and then other times I don't add enough flour. And then it rises really good, but I don't get that windowpane test exactly how I like it. That's where I'm starting to notice some of my problems are coming from.

Melissa: With the fresh ground flour, you absolutely do have to go by feel, which you're trying to do. I know that sometimes that gets really frustrating because you're like, well, if I knew what it felt like to be correct, then obviously that's what I would do it too. So sometimes that answer, I know, just makes you want to grit your teeth and be like, that's not helpful. So one of the things with the fresh ground flour, this is where I want to say doing these two things made the biggest difference for me in getting loaves that actually turned out consistently and were not bricks and weren't too dry. That was getting the hydration level right, which is harder with fresh ground flour. So for me, I will make it so it's really tacky upon mixing, so a little bit of the dough will actually stick to your fingers. So it's very wet. And then only mix those ingredients together for about four minutes. Just enough that they're combined and you can feel that it is kind of sticky and tacky. And then let that sit, usually for about four minutes. I'll let that just kind of sit for a little bit.

And then I'll go back and knead that just with the KitchenAid, the kneading hook, for another four minutes. So it's only really eight minutes total. Let it sit for 15 to 20 minutes and then come back and actually check if it feels still sticky, because it takes about 15 to 20 minutes for the fresh ground flour to absorb the moisture. Because you're correct, store bought flour the way that it's had the bran removed and just the process that that goes through, even when it's whole wheat it doesn't absorb moisture the same way as your fresh ground flour does.

So I found by kind of breaking up when I'm kneading the dough with that four minute window, which doesn't seem like very much, but that for me has just been the ticket. And then that 20 minutes afterwards. That's at the stage, after you've done that 20 minute sit time where you're letting it absorb the liquid, and then it is still doing some developing of the gluten. So then that's at the point where I would check for your windowpane and not directly after kneading. Because even though you're not doing sourdough necessarily, it's a little bit more like doing the fold method. Even though we are doing some kneading, but kind of waiting for that wait period for those gluten strands to develop so that you get windowpane instead of trying to do it right at the kneading time. I found that that allows it to develop while it's absorbing the moisture, and then I don't get too much flour in and the hydration level tends to stay a lot more consistent.

Britnay: That makes a lot of sense.

Melissa: Yeah, it's really, really helpful. And it's really fascinating because when I first started, you were so used to the way that store bought flour, be it whole wheat or all-purpose or bread flour, whatever, the way that it works and you are like, this is going to be so sticky. There's no way I can form a loaf. This is going to be tacky, it's going to stick to everything. And then you come back after that 20 minutes and you're like, oh, it's totally workable now. It's so weird because it's so different than what we're used to when working with the other flour, but every single time it has. If there's one time that you're still kind of playing with those ratios and you come back after that 20 minutes and you're like, oh, it's still a little bit too shaggy or a little bit too wet, at that time it's okay to incorporate a little bit more flour in there.

I wouldn't knead it in a ton. I wouldn't do a whole other four to eight minute kneading session. Just enough that you can actually get that extra flour incorporated into it, and then let it just do its rise time, et cetera. On the hydration level, after we've done that 20 minute rest, when you come back to it, I still have found that I need it to be a little bit stickier than you would with an all-purpose or a bread flour. I found anytime with the whole wheat that I still need it to be a little bit wetter, but you should still be able to form it and not have it sticking to your finger like a batter type thing, but just a little bit tacky. I don't know if you ever heard this, this was always given to me as an example when I was working with all-purpose flour, bread flour, white flour. That it should feel when it's kneaded correctly like smooth like a baby's butt.

Britnay: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Melissa: So you don't actually want that with fresh ground flour. If you've gotten it to feel that smooth, then you're likely going to have a dense end product. So we do want to keep it a little bit more on the moist side and not have it be that smooth. If you get to that texture with fresh ground flour, it's likely going to be a very dense, hard bread on the coming out of the oven side.

Britnay: That makes a lot of sense because that's what I usually get with the store bought flour is that real nice smooth texture and it comes out perfect, but with this, it comes out harder than a rock and it just crumbles. That makes a lot of sense.

Melissa: Yeah, I know. There's completely different rules for fresh ground flour and baking in comparison to store bought flour. It's like you have to throw probably about half of what you're used to out the window in order to get that good end product. So I think from what you've described, that just by doing those steps that it's going to make a world of difference. For the hole in the center, that may be that it could be under-proofed. Maybe. So I would first just make the changes we just talked about and then see what happens. If you still get the tunneling that goes kind of all the way through there, then I would look at proofing it a little bit longer so that initial first rise, letting that go, maybe even just an extra 10 minutes. Not a huge amount of time. Because fresh ground flour, I have found, does typically tend to go through yeast a little bit faster.

I feel like because the fresh ground flour has all of the components and the nutrients in it, that the yeast tends to feed on it faster, both in sourdough and even with store bought yeast. So just extend it like five or 10 times... Not 10 times, good night. Minutes. Five or 10 minutes longer and see if that makes a little bit of a difference. And then the other question I had for the hole in the middle is, I'm assuming these are sandwich loafs, is that correct?

Britnay: Yes.

Melissa: Okay. So when you are forming your sandwich dough into the loaf for that second rise, are you rolling it or how are you actually shaping that loaf?

Britnay: Yeah, I will eventually roll it and kind of puff it up a little bit and then drop it a couple times and help get some of the air pockets out. But yeah, I usually just roll it and try to shape it into a loaf.

Melissa: Okay, great. Because when I first started making bread and sandwich loaves, I didn't know that you rolled it. It's not like a cinnamon roll, but kind of like you roll it like that and I didn't know that. I just would put it in a ball like play-doh and just try to make it, force it into the shape of whatever my little loaf pan was.

Britnay: You [inaudible 00:14:09] fit.

Melissa: Yeah, exactly. I'm like, we are going to make this work. And then when I discovered rolling, I'm like, oh my goodness, the texture of the bread inside, just all of the things it got a lot better. But if you're not rolling it tight, especially on the first rolls, you have tunneling sometimes that too. But it sounds like that you're already rolling it, so that's great. I'm pretty sure it's a hydration issue, and then maybe a little bit of under-proofing. So I would test those two things first and make those adjustments, and I think that that will get you where you need to go. And also keeping that dough a little bit on the wetter side and that 20 minute wait time will really give you a good idea of actually what your moisture content is. I think that that should eliminate, too, the crumble issue that you're talking about when you're slicing it and it just crumbles into nothing.

Britnay: Awesome. Yeah, I'm running out of room for breadcrumbs.

Melissa: I know. One can only use so many breadcrumbs. There's only so many toppings that you could do, or meatballs and meat loafs, that type of thing. So we'll get you some sliceable bread there.

Britnay: Awesome. I like the sound of that.

Melissa: Good deal. And then this was the topic that I found intriguing, so I'm really glad that you did too. You had said that you'd been hearing about farmers that were letting their land rest in the seventh year.

Britnay: Yes.

Melissa: Okay. So I'm curious, where did you come across or where did you hear about this first?

Britnay: Honestly, I cannot remember. I was just bored one day and started watching YouTube videos on farming and overheard a farmer say, "Oh, my seventh year is this year, so we're resting on the land." I was like, oh, I recognize that phrase. So I understand the biblical standpoint from it from when you read about it in the Old Testament, but besides that, that is as far as my knowledge goes with that. So I'm like, well, what is the research on this? What do we know? I'm really curious because this is actually my sixth year on this property, so I'm actually planning to do this for my garden next year to see what happens.

Melissa: Okay. Well, I love that you're going to test it out. And yeah, you're right, a seven-year land rest or a seven-year sabbatical or letting the land lay fallow for the seventh year, those are just some different terms that are usually used to kind of explain this process. It definitely does have its foundation biblically. For example, Exodus 23:10, and that's for six years you're to sow your fields and harvest the crops, and during the seventh year, you let the land lie unplowed and unused. The poor among your people may glean from that, so whatever just happens to come up that you did not actually plant, for food. The wild animals may eat what is left. And then it also says to do the same with your vineyard and your olive groves, which is really interesting. And then the other portion that we see this come up again in the Old Testament is Leviticus.

So Leviticus 25:6, and this is the part that's fascinating because it says, during the year of rest, the land will give food for you, for your men and women's servants, the man you pay to work for you, the stranger who lives with you, even your cattle and the animals in your land will have food to eat. So it's this promise that if you follow this, and of course we're talking about this in the biblical context or from a Christian whatnot, that you will be provided for even more abundantly by obeying this, even though you're not actually planting and growing crops in that seventh year. Which kind of seems like an oxymoron. Honestly, to our mind, common sense-wise, you're like, well, this doesn't really sound like it makes that much sense. But it's been really fascinating.

Letting the land go fallow and using that time to let the land rest and regenerate. So for those who are interested in regenerative agriculture or sustainable land management practices, which I feel like is definitely, I almost hate to use the word trending, but I feel like a lot of more people are becoming more interested in that right now and looking at, what does regenerative agriculture actually mean? What does that do? We're trying to support farmers that are putting this into practice. And then for homesteaders, a lot of us are trying to just implement this on a very small scale just within our own homesteads. But really, sustainable land management practices as we look throughout all of human history, it's been used for thousands of years even though it has its foundation in ancient biblical rules. So fallowing the soil or letting it rest can help increase nutrient deposits like potassium and phosphorus. So there's a lot of our macro and micronutrients and some of these different minerals and whatnot that aren't always available at the top of the soil.

So you can have sometimes soil, especially in a garden setting or even in your fields, and some of these minerals and different things are in the soil, but they're not at the top root level. It takes them a while to work their way up from the deeper part of the soil to be up at the top of the soil and then actually be available in the soil for the plant to uptake it. And sometimes this is a time development as well. There can be calcium even in the upper level of the soil, so to speak, or phosphorus, potassium, et cetera, but it can actually take a year or two before it is fully available in a form in the soil that plants can draw it. And so that's kind of one of the reasons when we're using companion planting, which I'll make sure in this episode we'll link to some of the articles and different things on companion planting where we go into this. But that's one of the reasons that you actually don't plant root crops in an area until the third planting. Because they need the phosphorus and the potassium, and oftentimes those levels, even when they've been added to the soil, they're not actually available to the plants for a couple of seasons later.

So really interesting how companion planting uses some of the same principles, but you can also accomplish that with letting your soil lie fallow. So there's that part. Some of the other things is it raises your carbon level, it can raise your nitrogen and organic matter levels, it can improve your moisture holding capacity, and increase the beneficial microorganisms in the soil. Another benefit of letting a section of ground lay fallow like that for a whole year is it can reduce soil compaction. And that's because, typically, if we're not gardening in there, we're not harvesting in there, tilling up the soil, cultivating it, et cetera, you're decreasing the amount of actual compaction on the soil due to walking or farming equipment and all of that. So you're actually also helping, if you deal with soil compaction, if you have really clay soil or soil that's getting compacted, it can help with that as well.

What's really interesting is there's actually been a lot of studies that have shown the yield from growing areas that have had a year of rest versus just continually planting that soil and not ever taking time off. And one of the studies was done in Australia and it was done on wheat, and it showed that wheat grown in a fallowing rotation yielded overall a much higher yield or harvest of the wheat. So they looked at a 20-year period, and the crop actually yielded a largely higher profit than the fields that they planted every single year. So over 20 years, letting that every seventh year for the fields to lie fallow compared to just planting 20 years straight through, even though they actually had two... It'd be two years, right? Let me do... Yeah, 20, yeah. Two years where there was no crop grown.

The plot that they did that with had a much larger yield overall than the 20 year where they did it, even though, and this is the part I found really interesting, even though they were adding proper fertilizers and amendments and rotated with nitrogen fixing crops. But if they didn't take that year off, even with adding in all of those things, which is what a lot of us do in a backyard garden home setting type environment. We're adding our chicken manure or we're doing crop rotation and doing nitrogen fixing crops and adding amendments and different things like that. But it still didn't produce the high crop harvest that taking those years of fallow did. I found that really fascinating.

Britnay: That is really cool. That's what I was wondering what was going to happen with this. I was like, you know what? I want to see what happens on my land. I'm planning to do a soil test in the fall before I put it to rest and then do it again the following year. After the seventh year, once eighth year comes, I'll do another test to see what the science is telling me, because it's really interesting.

Melissa: Yeah, I'm really excited for you to do it. I find it really interesting too. One of the things is just letting it lie... And this depends on your space, too. Obviously, if you are very limited on the space that you can grow in, the only option that you would have to do this would be to completely not plant anything on your property for a year and just see what happens. But there's also where people will just choose a section. So it's almost like you're rotating through your growing space and your garden beds. And so sometimes people will take a field and they'll split it in to halves. They'll plant half the field for six years so that they always have one half of the field that they are growing from, but working that into a rotation. And sometimes people will even do that within garden beds. They'll choose one area of the garden and that will be the section that lies fallow, and then the following year it would flip to the other section, in that type of way.

So there's multiple ways that I think you could run and that you could test this, depending upon your space that you have available, and also if you're doing it from a biblical standpoint or not. The reason I say that, because some people feel that the purpose of it is not just for the soil health, but it's also a faith walk. And so if they don't plant anything at all, than really relying on faith and God's promise that that bounty will be there to take them through the seventh year. And it not only provides a Sabbath, so to speak, for the soil for that seventh year, but also for the farmer and doing the labor in that seven year, and it's a year of rest for them too. So I just say that because I know different walks of faith and different people come at a soil rest year from different aspects, but regardless which way you come at it, I think it's really impressive to look at and see the ways that it's showing that it definitely improves soil fertility as well as harvest yield.

Britnay: Yeah, that sounds really interesting because I was reading the scriptures on it, and that is a very important aspect of our family here. So I was like, you know what? If the Bible says we need to do it, we're going to do it. But now I'm like, wow, this is going to be a really nice science experiment. Question on that though was that, we do have a small vegetable garden, so I'm going to let the whole thing rest for next year. But in the front yard we have what I affectionately call my berry patch, but it's a redneck version of a berry patch. If I can find one little patch of sunshine, I'm going to put something there to see if it survives. So we'll see if that berry patch actually made it from last year or not. If it did, two years from now... No, I'm sorry, three years from now will be our seventh year. How would I do that with a perennial? Right now I have elderberry, blueberries, and grapes in there. So how would I do that with a perennial?

Melissa: Yeah, that's a really good question. Because you're right, you're not going to rip them out. And I don't think that by reading the scriptures, like with your vineyards and everything, that's not what I read from the scriptures, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So it's like you just would not be harvesting the crop. And so I actually did not research that. I would be really interested to know if you don't harvest the fruit, does that actually signal something to the plant? Does it feed back extra to the roots? And of course you're going to have the birds come in and eat some of those berries regardless if you harvest them or not. But it'll be really interesting. I will have to look up and see if I can find some research on that. If there's something that actually is triggered within the plant that would increase production the following year if you didn't actually harvest any of the fruit from it. That part, I don't know.

Britnay: Yeah, I did see a little bit online when I looked at it. Some of the things I was picking up were, once the plant produces, it stops producing once it's, I don't want to say "full" with the berries. It's not being harvested, so it's not going to continue to bring more blueberry, for example. So it can continue by ripening more blueberries, and eventually it will drop those berries or whatever's left over, and you'll get that natural compost that recycles under the soil. But that's as far as I got with that one because there wasn't a whole lot of research. So I was like, you know what? That's another thing I'm going to do. In just a couple years, once I reach my seven, I'm going to test the soil before and after and see what happens and monitor the health of the bushes and see if I find anything after the seventh.

Melissa: Yeah, I will be very curious to see what your soil tests show and even what you see as far as production the following year from the berries. And maybe it's very berry and fruit specific, because with blueberries, for example, the fruit blossoms are all formed in the winter, early spring. At least with the plants that I have, that's all you get for the year. So those blossoms that get pollinated, et cetera, form the blueberry and then those ripen and whatnot. But then I don't get, even if I were to stay on top of all of the picking, which we usually do because we only have about six blueberry plants, I'm not going to get in that year, anyways, more blossoms formed because I've removed those berries from it. Whereas with the raspberries and stuff and the way that that blossom cycle works, I'll still get more blossoms coming on and get some more for a longer period of time. But anyways, yeah, that's going to be really interesting. I can't wait to see your results over time. I'm finding it very fascinating, so yeah, I can't wait.

Britnay: Yeah, It's going to be fun.

Melissa: Yeah, I think so. I don't know about you, but I love part of the gardening, obviously I love to get the food, but I really like the experimental part. Just like with what you're doing, when you test something and you do this and you see what happens. I think it's really fun. It keeps it exciting and always learning. And I don't know, maybe I'm just a geek, but I really like that aspect.

Britnay: You're my kind of people though. Because I've been trying to grow a mullein in my medicinal garden for three years, and I'm either providing too much in the soil or not enough or there's not enough sun. There's always something. And of course, last year I'm starting to find mullein creeping up between the cracks of my concrete and they're coming up beautiful. And I'm like, I told a friend of mine, we have a freeway by my house that's being torn up. I said, I'm going to drive up there, I'm going to grab pieces of concrete, I'm going to put them in my car, take them home and throw them in my backyard and wait for the mullein to find that concrete. And I'm going to grow mullein. I was like, this is going to be fun. We'll see what happens.

Melissa: I like it. Yeah, mullein is one of those. I'm with you, it doesn't grow really wild and naturally here as it does on the east side of the mountains from us. And so the east side of the mountains where we live is very dry. We're on the coastal side, and so we're typically really wet. I think that mullein prefers, just like you're seeing, it really prefers the dry, hardly any nutrient. It seems to thrive in those environments. Because same as you, I had bought seed, I'd bought all these little starts, and then it must have just produced enough, a few flowers that there were seeds, because it didn't do that well. And then I find it over on the side of our driveway in the rockiest, most pitiful area, and there's this mullein growing. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. I'm thrilled, but I'm like, okay, I tried way too hard. Apparently, I was just too nice to it. It did not appreciate that environment.

Britnay: Yeah, that's exactly what a friend of mine told me. She goes, oh, you're feeding it too much. It's too happy. I said, well, it was miserable. Because it's like some plants are, it freaks out if the pH level is off by 0.1%, but it'll find some crack in the concrete and like, yeah, time to party. And it's like, yeah, that's my mullein.

Melissa: Yeah, 100%. The mullein for me is definitely that way, as well as plantain. It just loves the poorest, rockiest, graveled areas, which is great because they don't have to cultivate it, but it's very interesting how different plant needs and how they will thrive when they have the right environment versus not. So yeah, I can't wait to see all that happens. And you'll have to keep us posted on the bread, how that goes. I can't wait to see your victory picture when we have the nice sliceable, fluffy, fluffy loaves. I know it's coming. We're going to get there. Well, Britnay, thank you so much for coming on and for being a part of the Academy and the membership. Always look forward to seeing your bright smiling face and your sense of humor in the comment section.

Britnay: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. It was fun.

Melissa: Yeah, you're welcome. Well, I hope that you enjoyed that episode and learned some fun new things. Now this is part of the series that we are doing because we are going to be opening the doors to the Pioneering Today Academy in March, specifically March 22nd. And we only open the doors a couple of times a year. So if you are ready to join the membership, you get access to every single one of my courses, including the opportunity to have some of these one-on-one calls, and get to know the members that we've been highlighting, as well, inside the community aspect. You, my friends, want to make sure that you head on over to melissaknorris.com/pta, melissaknorris.com/pta and jump on the wait list. You'll get more information and first access to the spots as soon as we open the doors. I will be back here with you next week. Blessings and Mason jars for now, my friends.