Daily Bread...

My favorite three-seed loaf at the health food store is now going for close to 5 bucks, an indulgence I no longer feel I can justify. But the idea of resigning myself to a lifetime of mushy grocery store bread had me down. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands and make some bread. I’m fairly satisfied with the results: two chewy and rather tasty whole-wheat loaves. The kids seem to like it. But as we slice our way through the second loaf, I’m left wondering whether I have the discipline to keep it up.

Christian likes to tell the story of how his mother was very briefly caught up in the bread- making fad of the seventies. For a short time, as he tells it, the smell of homemade bread graced their kitchen. And then…nothing. It had lost its charm. My mother-in-law, a very genteel British lady, is a decidedly unenthusiastic home cook. I have a feeling that the microwave oven would rank right up there with antibiotics in her list of crowning achievements of the twentieth century. I can’t imagine that bread baking would in any way be her cup of tea. But I have to ask myself—is it mine? I’m no Nigella Lawson myself, but I am a microwave-free, whole foods kind of gal (I mean the concept, not the grocery store since we don’t really have one in proximity). I certainly wouldn’t call the process difficult. A little time consuming, maybe, with all the rising, kneading etc. It does seem like the kind of thing that might become somewhat effortless once one had incorporated it into her routine. And right now, the days are long and cash is short. So let’s keep mixing it up.