I don't think that, in cooking, one must actually© grow the wheat that the flour was ground from; plain old store bought ingredients are good enuff. The recipe need not be one's own; an old family recipe will do or even one taken from The Joy of Ludicranian Cooking will serve. The important point is that the various elements of the recipe be in their most basic form (baking powder is allowed even though it is a pre-mixed combination of baking soda and an acidic ingredient, typically cream of tartar). In a cake mix these dry ingredients will be all pre-mixed. Other ingredients are added by hand. For other dishes there will be some degree of pre-mixed ingredients. Often the lovely AnnaS and I will do something of a hybrid cooking involving using a mix of one sort or another but adding ingredients beyond those recommended by the suggestions on the box. In the case of a dish involving something like, e.g., pinto beans using canned beans is considerably easier than using dry beans that require long periods of soaking and precooking without necessarily adding much to the quality of the final product (other than assuring a low sodium content) but would, I think, prevent one from saying that the process was "from scratch".
