baking bread

The baking of bread has always seemed like a sacred, religious act to me. Turning out a respectable loaf is something that one cannot do by the seat of one's pants -- it requires study, concentration, practice, diligence, solemnity.

And, bread is the stuff of life, a constancy through the ages and the cultures, though its composition may be varied.

This morning, I set out to bake my first loaf. Please excuse the fuzzy pictures.

1. In the beginning... The first step is to combine flour and yeast in a bowl. Flour and yeast, the simple building blocks.




2. Get it just right. The other ingredients must be combined to an extremely precise temperature in order for the yeast to be activated correctly. I felt I was having quite a time of it on my gas stove, but just imagine if you had a wood one...
3. Kneading Kneading the dough is noisy, physical labor. The dough slaps against the countertop if you have the right vigor to it -- which I do not. I wonder what it sounds like against more "primitive" surfaces. What would a pioneer woman knead her dough on? A wooden cutting board?


4. Rise and Shine There are 2-3 separate stages in the process for just waiting -- letting the dough rest and rise. And the wait is long -- 30-60 minutes at a time. And rising must be done in a "warm" place. What constitutes a "warm" place but an oven on its lowest setting? I thought? Then I hoped that "low" wasn't too warm and beginning to bake the bread.

5. After Something went wrong. I had a feeling it would early on, when it never rose quite enough, and when the dough seemed too stiff before I kneaded it, and when I didn't knead it long enough... after I painted it with margarine, it at least looked pretty. Pretty and stocky.

6. Slice of Life While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body."
Jesus, mighty Jesus, ate something as ordinary as bread. The ordinary becomes sacred.