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| Is It Ready Yet Mom? |
There are very few things that I do that make me feel completely competent and capable. Baking a loaf of bread is one of them. Homemade bread tastes better and is better for you than store bought bread, but I get impatient waiting 4 seconds for my I Phone to retrieve my email. Waiting for dough to rise seems like an eternity. When I do take the time, however, I never regret it. Plus getting to say to someone “oh, yeah, I baked a couple of loaves of bread today” makes me sound like I’m domestically divine. And I rarely get the chance to be domestically divine.
Baking bread is simple. It’s one of the oldest prepared foods on earth and has been traced to prehistoric times. Thanks to Louis Pasture in 1859 yeast bread was born and has been a staple food in Europe, the United States, the Middle East, North Africa, and a bunch of other places ever since. Yeast is a tiny plant-like micro-organism that is all around us in the soil, in plants, and in the air. As soon as you mix the packet of yeast with a couple tablespoons of warm water, the teeny grains begin to bubble and come alive. A whiff of this already smells comforting; like wearing warm, fuzzy slippers. Then the yeast gets added to nearly the same ingredients that the ancient Egyptians used over 4,000 years ago; flour, salt, honey, and milk. Now you need to knead! With your hands, you massage into being one of the world’s most basic foods. It just takes a few minutes to have a smooth, slightly sticky ball. You get the bonus benefit of working off some frustration as well. Plop the dough into an oiled bowl, place it in somewhere warm, cover it with a dish towel and wait for it to grow. Ahhh! Your stress level is already lower as you breathe in the yeasty smell left on your hands. Now you wait. The yeast needs time to munch on the starches and gluten in the flour and expands and doubles in a couple of hours. Once it does, you gently take your new creation and punch it square in the middle then slice it in half! Put each half into a greased pan and let it grow – once again. Tick tock, tick tock. After another hour, you bake the dough and 45 minutes later you’ll have a substance that will give you substance. Plus your kitchen will be filled with the most delicious aroma. It’s the scent of warmth and abundance and home. Definitely not as easy as tossing a loaf into your grocery cart, but well worth it in the end.
Bread is such a general necessity we usually don’t give it much thought until we don’t have any. Yet, bread is important enough to us that we have deemed it equal to currency. Bread is slang for money. So is the word dough. ‘Putting bread on the table’ and the term ‘bread-winner’ both mean contributing economically to our lives and the lives of those we love. The’ bread-basket’ refers to a rich agriculture region. Such a simple and uncomplicated food has played a considerable role in politics all around the globe. Inflated prices on bread have caused political upheavals and social divisions. Bread is also significant in religion. Christ referred to bread as his body and that He was the bread of life. The Bible calls spiritual grace 'daily bread'. Kind of makes you think - all those PB&J’s you have unconsciously consumed throughout your life were much more important than you imagined!
Miguel de Cervantes, the Spanish poet and author of Don Quixote, is quoted with saying, “All sorrows are less with bread”. I guarantee that if you take a little time and give baking your own bread a try, you will agree. Right now, artesian bread is very popular in the food world. All that fancy label means is one person making one loaf at a time. Artesian breads are made each and every day in kitchens and outdoor ovens by women and men and children who would never think of themselves as trendy, just hungry! There are so few things that are as simple as a simple loaf of bread. And so few things that are as important or pleasurable. Grab some flour and get baking! Then the phrase ‘greatest thing since sliced bread’ will mean something very wonderful.
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