Breaking into Bread
My Excruciatingly Slow Journey to Baking
Mrs. Becky Greene
There they were on the shelf at Goodwill, like 1980s artifacts of the health and fitness craze. Nestled between the old food dehydrators and juicers of QVC lore, just beyond the huddle of George Foreman grills, sat a collection of bread makers, declaring themselves dusty diamonds amidst the forgotten appliances of someone’s past New Year’s resolution. I settled on the one with the purple tag — half off. A pristine machine perhaps used only once, sold for $6.
But why would I purchase a bread maker, bargain buy or not, if I had no aspirations to add an extra appliance into my kitchen cupboards or an extra activity like bread-making into my hectic schedule? It seems rather like buying training wheels for a bike that’s sitting in the shed because nobody plans to ride it. I hadn’t grown up with home-baked bread. I hadn’t really grown up with much of home-baked anything. So, I wouldn’t have pegged myself as the next Pioneer Woman. In fact, when we were first dating, I proudly informed my husband that I was not “domestic” — a fact made evident when at my bridal shower, my soon-to-be mother-in-law and her sisters engaged me in the task of whipping up a cake without a recipe, using only the ingredients placed before me. I scanned the table for the most important ingredient required for any cake-baking experience: the box of Duncan Hines cake mix, which, sadly, eluded me. Like an artist without a paint-by-numbers canvas, I would be forced to concoct a culinary masterpiece from scratch. And in a heroic test of his faithfulness, my fiancé would be forced to eat it.
He still married me.
It was some years later when I was introduced to the concept of bread baking at a family gathering where my sister-in-law served a homemade loaf. Delicious as it was, I inquired about whether she’d been binge-watching Little House on the Prairie. Was she aware that grocery stores already had this system down, selling loaves in plastic packages one could procure for a couple bucks? Why mix and knead, fold and bake that which was already sliced, slashed, and sold for $2.99? She convinced me to buy a bread maker so I could find out myself.
Some time passed before I thought about it again, but eventually I roamed into Goodwill and casually made my way to the small appliance section, rummaged through the selection, and found the perfect bread maker for me: the cheap one. My sister-in-law came over to give me a tutorial and before long, we had tossed ingredients into the machine and pressed start. There was something magical about the mingling of basic substances like water, oil, flour, salt, sugar, and yeast inside that gyrating canister. None remained in its original state, each sacrificed for something better. The dry ingredients dissolved into the water and oil; or was it the wet ingredients absorbed the former? Each was lost to one another in a dance of perfect surrender, begetting an incubated dough that in time would rise to feed my flock.
Once the ball emerged, I laid it out and stretched it to its brink before wrapping its ends into a hug and placing it inside the pan. I thought about how disconnected I’d been from the food that came into my house. How simple it is to order online and pick up your groceries, or swing by a fast-food chain and get dinner to go. But accompanying the flour, which had already been harvested and milled before it arrived in my hands, to its final resting place on our table was an intimate experience that engulfed my senses. As it baked, the aroma wafted from the oven, saturating the air with a cozy comfort that settled in like a familiar friend home for dinner.
Who was this gluten goddess calling down bread from heaven? With my trusty bag of generic brand flour and my $6 bread machine from Goodwill, I had become a bread-maker.
The first loaf was actually a success, if I do say so myself. Who was this gluten goddess calling down bread from heaven? With my trusty bag of generic brand flour and my $6 bread machine from Goodwill, I had become a bread-maker. Move over, Pioneer Woman; Frontier Lady is on the job. I’ve since made many more that put that prototype to shame, including my Italian pizza crust the kids now request on birthdays and other special occasions. Each time, my family members announce their anticipation with anecdotes that make my mama’s heart melt. Once, one child tried to convince her younger sibling, whose finicky fasting is legendary in our home, to eat the vittles set before him with a reminder: “Mommy’s pizza tastes better than Little Caesar’s because they only make it with their ingredients; Mommy makes hers with love.”
That child was my favorite that day.
It’s not that I’m a bread-maker extraordinaire. Drawn away to tend to a sibling brawl, I’ve forgotten somewhat important ingredients like yeast. Rushed to get out the door to a soccer practice, I’ve selected the wrong setting, the wrong temperature, the wrong time… or even failed to plug in the machine altogether. And only recently did I learn about sourdough starter. But I have made progress. I’ve ventured into baking einkorn, which requires a somewhat nuanced leavening process. I’ve even ditched the training wheels of my bread machine to make this ancient grain from scratch using the manual method of measuring ingredients by weight, turning the dough by hand, and assessing the rise based on clock and climate.
But what is most satisfying is the experience I get to hand onto my kids. As my daughter rolls out the dough, proclaiming how she looks forward to doing this with her daughter someday, I realize I haven’t just taught her a skill, I’ve passed on a tradition. There is a magical mess through which we nurture these familial experiences; it is a formation not a format. There is no exact recipe or a boxed mix. We must work from scratch. And this, like bread-making, will always require time, attention, and sacrifice. One can’t snap her fingers and have food and fellowship; a hardy home like a hardy bread must be kneaded, shaped, and baked with intentionality, lest the family culture spoil.
I have long wanted an incarnational kitchen that dripped and stewed and bubbled over with aromas that lingered long after the dishes were dried. I’ve wanted to captivate the senses of my children through the nourishment they received at our table, not just to enhance the experience of physical sustenance, but because with each meal I might etch a memory into our family’s story; one my children will take with them once they leave the four walls of our home.
I don’t suspect my bread machine will remain forever in our home. Like my children, it may be meant to leave to bless others in a pay-it-forward drama where life hands on life. But until it ends up back in thrift-store limbo, biding its time before it becomes yet another man’s treasure, it serves, as of now, as just one means through which I might slow the pace of my domestic domain so I can add a little extra leaven of love to the lives we’re raising in this little bakery we call home.
