baking bread, breaking bread

If you haven’t watched the Netflix documentary mini-series Cooked yet, go do it now.  Seriously – go binge it immediately.  Take a friend with you.  Then (please) come back and read this. 

Cooked is the visual rendition of Michael Pollen’s new book on the way the four elements of nature—fire, water, air, and earth—have influenced the history of human cooking and culture.  It is fascinating.  Now that you’ve watched it (because of course you did... 😉), you will undoubtedly understand my strong desire of late to bake my own bread, and lots of it. 

Have you ever pounded the palm of your floured hand into a ball of yeasted dough?  Or smelled a fresh free-form loaf come out of the oven, when you can still hear the crust crackling?  Have you broken warm pieces amongst friends and family at the dinner table, sipping red wine or perhaps dipping them into a bowl of homemade soup?  Store-bought bread is great, and I still enjoy picking up local artisan loaves when I need to.  But pulling your own homemade bread out of the steaming oven and letting the smell waft through the kitchen as people walk in asking, “You baked bread?!”… that’s pretty heavenly.  Now I can even more fully appreciate when Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”  Sustenance for the body, yes; but sustenance for the spirit too.  The baking and the breaking of bread is an entire joyous, communal experience.

Case in point:  We spent the last full week of June this year with our family in Utah.  At Bear Lake, in fact—near where Matt and I got married almost five years ago.  It was wonderful.  In six days I got to bake ten loaves of bread for 19 people.  On three separate occasions, I made two loaves of honey oat bread for toast and sandwiches (Cora and Josh expertly spread the honey on top)...  

And on Thursday night, four simple boule loaves came out of the oven to go with Matt’s signature gazpacho.  (These have been a hit at work, too – the kids I nanny have christened them “Bre Bread”… though I’m fairly certain anyone can mix together flour, yeast, salt, and water.  That’s literally all there is to it!).

    

I loved when everyone got excited about a fresh loaf and could hardly wait for it to cool to cut into it.  I loved that people asked about the baking process.  I loved when the kiddos got their hands sticky with dough and honey.  I loved toasting a piece and eating it with peanut butter and coffee in the morning. 

Please, please, even just once, try baking your own bread.  And while you do it, think about what a small miracle it is.  The wheat grows, and then it dies.  The yeast ‘brings it back to life’ and it grows again, and then we bake it and it cooks and ‘dies’ again. But then, we get to eat it.  We get to break it and share it and enjoy it—around the entire globe—and because of that miracle of bread, we are imparted nourishment and life.  Death, life, death, life… sound familiar?    

Perhaps once I'm on my one hundredth, or one thousandth, loaf many years from now, the excitement will wear off.  But I sure hope not.  I hope that for the rest of my life I get to keep thinking about what a little bread (maybe, on occasion, taken with a little wine) can do. 

"O taste and see that the LORD is good..."  -Psalm 34:8