The Four Winds & whole wheat bread

Historical fiction about the Dust Bowl, and a wholesome, grainy loaf

Hello! I just spent a week in Utah, bike packing the White Rim road with my friend and then hanging out in and around Moab for a few days. It was an awesome trip and so cool to be biking in gorgeous Canyonlands National Park, but I’m also happy to be back in my inland temperate rainforest town, baking bread and waiting for the snow to fall! I’ve been getting into milling my own flour, and so you’ll see more recipes on here featuring it, including this week’s issue below. Enjoy!

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Good Book

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah (2021)

In a nutshell 

The Four Winds is a novel set on a Texas farm during the Great Depression. Millions across the country are out of work, food is scarce, and opportunities have dried up. For the Martinelli family, the situation is made much worse by the years-long drought that destroys their livelihood and sends dust swirling through their wheat farm, creating massive sand dunes, coating their home, and entering their lungs. The Dust Bowl conditions test Rafe and Elsa, along with their two children, and force them to make difficult and painful decisions to survive.

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Structure

The novel is told in the third person, focusing mostly on Elsa Martinelli, and her daughter Loreda.

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Three things I liked about The Four Winds

1. Gave a human experience to a historical period

I love historical fiction that gives me characters to remember when a certain time period comes up. I remember being in a photography class in university and discussing Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother photograph. I thought of that photograph frequently when reading about Elsa’s struggles to keep her children alive and in making tough decisions for the family. I didn’t know a lot of the details of Dust Bowl migrants, like that they faced a lot of discrimination when moving to California, or that the jobs they could get were designed to keep them poor through mandatory use of company towns and stores. I appreciate that while the Martinelli family is fictional, there were so many details included that were accurate to what real families experienced during this time.

2. Protagonist’s resilience

When we meet the main character, Elsa, she is a teenager who has grown up with little affection or attention from her parents. She stumbles into a fling with Rafe, and lacks the mental fortitude to navigate the challenges of her relationship and changing circumstances. Since the book spans several decades, I enjoyed getting to see how she gradually becomes stronger and more resilient, able to battle through what seem to be increasingly bitter challenges. By the end of the novel, Elsa is a strong and courageous figure who has managed to eke out livelihood for her and her children in near impossible conditions.

3. It’s a slow burn

Sometimes I like a novel that has action right off the bat, as long as the story can sustain that level of excitement and interest. But sometimes my favourite books end up being those that slowly unravel themselves, giving you enough to stay engaged while layering details and building the plot.

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If you like The Four Winds, read this: 

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

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Quote I liked

“History has shown us the strength and durability of the human spirit, In the end, it is our idealism and our courage and our commitment to one another—what we have in common—that will save us.”

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Good Bread

Whole wheat sandwich loaf with fresh milled flour

Why this bread for this book?

The Martinelli family grow wheat on their family farm, and while their ability to produce crops initially makes them better off than others in their community, once the crops fail, they have nothing. Wheat, its abundance in the early pages of the novel, and then later its absence, play an important role in The Four Winds.

These days I am really into milling my own flour at home and learning which wheat berries produce the flour best for different kinds of baked goods. I thought a simple and practical whole wheat loaf would be a perfect fit for The Four Winds.

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Recipe

I used hard red winter wheat berries that I bought from a granary near Armstrong, BC. I have a Mockmill that attaches to and uses the motor in my KitchenAid stand mixer. Once I milled the flour, I then used this recipe here for the bread.

Looking forward

Book I’m looking forward to reading:  Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora

New music I’m looking forward to listening to: Houdini by Dua Lipa

What I’m looking forward to baking: Turmeric sourdough

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