Making our first batch of home made bread

My plans to have a taste and cooking extravaganza while we are here, has got off to a really rocky start.
The funeral feast, while very interesting, is the likely cause of me now being on a 5 day course of antibiotics. I think we can safely narrow it down to a combination of raw and filthy cow stomach, and my competitive show off streak.
Then, on about our forth evening here, I went fishing for the first time, and caught a really nice pan sized fish in the lagoon. This in itself was miraculous as I didn’t have any bait and had simply stuck on a hermit crab that I enticed out of its shell.
After gutting and scaling it I popped it into the freezer when I got home, because we were heading off to Mthatha for two days to pick up the girls.
Not wanting to waste it I gave it to our neighbour, Nonezile.
Then a few afternoons ago I had taken the girls for a walk on the rocks at low tide, and without trying picked up three hand sized fresh oysters and a really nice fist sized Alikrickle. I was planning to show the kids how to cook them the next day, and shoved them in the fridge for the night.
Sadly, that was the night I got massively sick, and over the next 48 hours only managed to get down half an apple and a hard boiled egg.
So again, I donated my loot to Nonezile, so as not to waste them.
I had also found some very big Sea Urchins. I have never tasted them and was keen to give them a go, but again, with my gastro, they seemed about as appealing as a Gordon Brown/George Bush/Julius Malema speech. (Take your pick)

Nonezile paid dividends though, because she popped over this morning with some freshly picked mielies (corn) for us. It was great, and looked like nothing you would pick up in one of our supermarkets

So today’s first attempt at baking bread here, was going to be a big deal. It was our first small step towards making our kitchen and larder self sustainable. And it could also include the kids, which would be fun.
Things didn’t get off to a great start.
I read 750 grams of whole wheat flour, and 750 grams of cake flour.
The recipe called for 750 ml of both.
So I basically used the right amount of yeast, salt etc, and twice the amount of flour.
Difficult to remedy when you are up to your elbows in batter and your three year old son is asking you to take him to the loo every seven and a half minutes.
But we soldiered on and we ended up with two pretty reasonable loaves.

I got into trouble with these ladies before I had even started. I got glared at by the Nonezile's chickens who were roosting on top of my lovely pile of fire wood. Sorry girls.

Caleb, who is a real pyromaniac, sick or not, is like a little freaking fire feeding monster. He loves anything with a flame and constantly feeds little pieces of wood to keep it going. Naughty bugger. Just like his dad was.

As the sun was setting and we were all sitting on the logs around the fire waiting for the bead to finish, our neighbours Nonezile and Nosandise, popped past and were very impressed with our efforts. (Or that a man was making bread. A real man)
I wonder what she thinks of our urban adjustments.

For all of the cock up's, the end result wasn't actually too bad.