EVERYONE CALLED HER BREAD TOO HARD — UNTIL THE FLOUR RAN OUT

Chapter 1 — The Bread Nobody Wanted

Snow had already begun falling when Eleanor Hayes carried her basket through the narrow road leading into Millstone Hollow.

Inside the basket were six small loaves of bread.

They were dark.

They were heavy.

And they were hard enough that people in the village had begun calling them Eleanor’s bricks.

At the market, Mrs. Whitmore picked up one loaf, pressed it with two fingers, and laughed.

“Good heavens, Eleanor. Did you bake bread or make firewood?”

Several women nearby laughed.

Eleanor lowered her eyes.

She was thirty-eight, a widow, and the mother of two children. Her husband had died three winters earlier, leaving behind a small cabin, a few chickens, and a patch of poor soil that barely produced enough corn to survive.

Wheat flour was too expensive for her.

So Eleanor used what she had.

Cornmeal.

Bran.

A little salt.

Water.

And sometimes, if she was lucky, a spoonful of rendered fat.

Her bread was nothing like the soft white loaves sold by the baker.

But it filled stomachs.

That was enough for Eleanor.

“Why don’t you buy proper flour?” asked Mr. Caldwell, the village baker.

Eleanor gave him a faint smile.

“Because proper flour costs money.”

The laughter faded for a moment.

Everyone knew she had little.

Still, someone whispered behind her.

“She should stop selling that terrible bread.”

Eleanor picked up her empty basket.

She had sold only two loaves.

That evening, she returned to her cabin with six hungry eyes waiting for her.

Her daughter Clara was sitting beside the fireplace.

“Did you sell them all?”

Eleanor shook her head.

“No.”

Clara looked disappointed.

Eleanor placed the remaining bread on the table.

“Then we’ll eat it ourselves.”

Her son Samuel smiled.

“I like Mama’s bread.”

Eleanor laughed softly.

“You’re the only person in Millstone Hollow who does.”

Outside, the snow continued falling.

Neither Eleanor nor anyone else in the village knew that winter had only just begun.

And that soon, the bread everyone laughed at would become the most valuable food in the valley.