There is a certain thrill as you go about measuring all the ingredients for the bread and then the tension and excitement build as you finally begin pommeling the dough into submission. For me the aggressive kneading and pounding of the dough is as much the reason to make bread as the eating.
I make many kinds of bread from spicy Jalapeno breads to sweet sour dough bread, and sprouted breads or breads with whole grains and nuts. Whole grain breads are the ones I do most because they are more healthful and also the most beautiful to serve.
This is one of my recent loaves of Grandma Sadie's Egg Bread (Challah): A recipe I copped off an Internet blog many years ago. It is resplendent with eggs, honey, butter and good will. I changed the recipe around to use half bread flour and half whole wheat flour, then glazed it heavily with egg yolk and seeded it with flecks of kosher salt, poppy, white sesame, caraway, and dark sesame seeds. One hot bite of this bread with a soft grade AA butter and you are transported to straight to Heaven.
Baking is an art but my theory for bread baking success is postulated on the secret built in requisite for certain genetic accoutrements born into the skin of the hands of its baker. I presume to think good bread making requires a certain sort of inherited skin type to be able to have the yeast respond to good handling. Yeast is a living organism and it prefers a certain human touch on its surfaces in order to yield up its glorious rise. I secretly scoff at and eschew dough mixing paraphernalia such as dough hooks and the use of food processors for dough making because I firmly believe the dough has to respond to caressing finger tips to be good. Make love to your dough and it will yield its bounty up to you! Talk to it the dough; stroke it, tell it you will adore its cake like texture and it will be well appreciated at dinner. A flirty dough is a sucker for praise.
I inherited my "yeast" growing dermis from my Father's Mother, Granny; a woman so famous for her rolls there was a never ending line of folks at her table. My Father often told me of the wonderful meals she produced for her six children and all the other neighborhood kids she fed, as well, during the Depression. Her children learned to stand at the oven and pop the hot rolls out from the pan the instant they were browned. This stealthy activity kept them from losing their place at mealtimes and lowered the risk of them finding an empty bread bowl when they were finally sat at table. Granny's rolls and breads are the stuff of legends.
There is also a mental attitude to baking. If you have no joy in you don't try to bake or you will yield up a cruel mass of half risen flat pones.
My dear husband loved to have me in the kitchen baking. He enjoyed the smells and sounds of baking and he had all his favorites he preferred for me to bake. He preferred lemon meringue pie, cream cheese pound cake, cheesecakes of all varieties, whole wheat French style baguettes, egg bread, rye bread and the black sweet sour pumpernickel he'd had from his German first wife's mother. This lady had risked everything to escape from East Germany with her lover, her teen daughter ,and the clothes on their backs. Unfortunately, the had to leave behind her older son and the half brother of our first wife behind. (note: "our" first wife was a brilliant if neurotic translator, working for the European Union, whose untimely death in the late 70's was at her own hand, shortly after she and my husband divorced).
I did not take offense as my husband steadfastly referred to his first wife, throughout our marriage, as "my wife" and called me the "Chou Chou" (sweetie). I realize first loves are something you don't tamper with in life or death. It is impossible to be jealous of a dead woman who left behind the finest man I have ever known and who was snatched up by me some 25 years later.
It is a great pleasure to take the pains to make a good bread and then offer it up to appreciative mouths as a sort of prayer for redemption. It is well worth the sacrifices: the broken nails; burnt fingers and all the scars that plague a good baker ( I seem to have a propensity for burning the inside of my forearm as I pull the loaves out of the oven).
It must be remembered that bread is the main course a Christian priest offers up as the Host with wine for communion. Ditto, the Hebrew Shabbat table always features a shiny chubby brown braided loaf of Chalot (Challah) well hidden under the traditional embroidered Challah cover cloth until it can be blessed and served. The Challah bread is traditionally served to evoke the memories of the Manna God rained down on the Hebrew tribes to nourish them as they rambled about in the desert aimlessly looking for the Promised Land for forty years.
To eat bread is to be human. Certainly, we find no evidence of any other species baking or brewing. I mention brewing because the earliest forms of beer were assemblages of fermenting bread and water. Ancient Egyptians brewed a thick sweet beer concoction with honey and barley Emmer wheat bread. Honey is the only comestible that may still be eaten from Egyptian tombs as it evidently stays edible for several millennia.
The citizens of France rioted and overthrew their monarchs for want of bread. Let it be known to one and all Marie Antoinette is often misquoted and she did not say, "let them eat cake" but she did say, "let them eat brioche". (there is another post to sing the praises of brioche)
Jean Valjean of Les Miserables fame (a Victor Hugo classic) was pursued and harassed for decades because he dared to steal a loaf of bread to feed his sister's children.
Crimes have been committed for bread, sins have been forgiven by bread, religions have their rites and traditions centered around bread. Even the Christian Jesus broke bread into many pieces and fed a large crowd of people. After scores of millennia bread is still the stuff of life and I would not have it any other way.
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