Making Bread

Four loaves of white bread sat on the cutting board in my grandma's kitchen at some point during every one of our summer visits and most of the time during the Christmas visits, too, though sometimes sticky cinnamon buns might replace them. The warm heels were my favorite where the crust curled around the soft white bread inside. I remember a story of my mom and her sisters cutting off both heels -- probably not the best for storage, but how could anyone resist?

After I graduated from college I met another bread-making family in Thailand. They were from the U.S. and lived not far from the house I was watching. Every morning -- every morning -- she had dough rising, and by noon there was fresh bread. She had two sons who devoured most of it before dinner. The bread baking reminded me of my grandma's house half way around the world. Maybe someday I would bake bread.

And we have been baking bread, but not often enough to get it right. Pizza dough I have down, I don't even need to consult the More With Less Cookbook, my favorite kitchen literature. But bread I still struggle with. Yesterday the big meal was going to be vegetable soup and bread (and cheese, we live in Wisconsin). But we were out of yeast and Trader Joe's counts it as one of their "seasonal items". After negotiating another walk to the smaller grocery store that carries yeast year-round, we found our neighbor friend playing sidewalk chalk. The grocery store could wait, chalk after a 4 month hiatus could not. We did pick up the yeast later, but I didn't bother to check the flour supply. Not surprising, we were low. The recipe called for 7-8 cups. Whole wheat we had, but I've worked with it enough times to know that it won't take the place of white -- or it might, but it will be a lot of work.

Dietrich helped work the course flour into the wet ingredients (at least the yeast claimed to work well with whole grains) but eventually returned to his lego moon lander. I moved the big blue ceramic bowl to the table for better leverage. The dough worked me as much as I worked it. At first I was bemoaning to myself how I can forget to get flour when making bread? Why not just have extra around, and yeast, too, for that matter? Why do I seem to have just barely enough of everything? Maybe we should become members of Costco! Thankfully the dough started working better and I could stop questioning my worth and just kneed. I could feel it in my gut, and shoulders, and the heals of my hands. I pushed the coarse dough in on itself, again, again, until it was at least bouncing back slightly. Two hours later, it had nearly doubled. That didn't make rolling it out any easier (it was a recipe for french bread) but it was edible and obviously high fiber. Flour is on the list. Two bags, at least. And yeast. And next time, I'm trying Grandma's recipe.