Last fall, somewhere on the Great Plains, a clanking combine sliced through a row of sun-cured wheat. From there the golden yield rumbled along the roads of commerce, making stops at a grain elevator, flour mill and grocery store. And now it’s come to this: a powdery dust of white on the hands of a 7-year-old who’s making her first loaf of homemade bread.
“But why do we have to learn to make bread?” Emily had asked earlier. “We get all our bread from the store.”
We do indeed, which is exactly why we’ve arranged a Sunday visit to Mary’s kitchen. In all my 50 years, I’ve never made bread. But there’s no reason why my kids should be thus deprived. So Mom, Dad and the two girls have come to learn what the staff of life smells, feels and tastes like before the plastic wrapper goes on.
The loaves of oatmeal and cinnamon take shape on Mary’s kitchen counter, now sprinkled deep with wintry drifts of flour. There isn’t room for me, so I adjourn with Mary’s husband, Zolton, to his garage woodshop. Much like the kitchen, a fine layer of fragrant dust covers everything. Except here it’s native hardwoods -- black cherry, sugar maple and black walnut -- that perfume the air.
It’s chilly amidst the saws and stacks of lumber and what mortal male can resist the allure of fresh-baked anything? So inside we go, to savor warm slices perfected by butter and homemade Then we tell – what else? – bread stories.
“When I was a kid in East Lansing about all we had was Wonder bread,” says Zolton, with a grimace. “But it did make great bait. We’d roll it into little dough balls and fish for carp in the Red Cedar River."
Back in the 1960s and 70s, most American bread was tasteless and nondescript – little more than a delivery vehicle for bologna and mustard or the ubiquitous PB&J.
“My first taste of real bread,” I reminisced, “was Germany, 1984. We were in the field, on Army maneuvers, sick to death of field rations. So a guy sneaks into town and comes back with a loaf of real rye. It was flat-out incredible – great texture, nutty and yeasty flavor, a full meal in its own right. He’d also got us a few bottles of Pilsen lager, and we ate on the floor of a hiker’s hostel as moonlight streamed in through the window. Ah, youth.”
We talk some more, then it’s time for the kids to see the woodshop. On his lathe Zolton turns out two spinning tops for the girls, as shavings of black cherry speckle his sweatshirt. The wood itself even smells like cherries. And the tops are elegant simplicity personified. When spun on a table, they rotate for a minute or more.
In a world gone mad for efficiency and profit some say there’s no time for such handmade indulgence. That’s what toy stores and electric bread makers are for (there’s one of the latter rusting in our kitchen closet). But as Wendell Berry says, before using a labor-saving device we should ask this question: “What better thing will we do with the time that we’ve saved?”
Nothing, as far I can tell. From the grist of these few bright hours, what machine could ever fashion a finer afternoon?
“But why do we have to learn to make bread?” Emily had asked earlier. “We get all our bread from the store.”
We do indeed, which is exactly why we’ve arranged a Sunday visit to Mary’s kitchen. In all my 50 years, I’ve never made bread. But there’s no reason why my kids should be thus deprived. So Mom, Dad and the two girls have come to learn what the staff of life smells, feels and tastes like before the plastic wrapper goes on.
The loaves of oatmeal and cinnamon take shape on Mary’s kitchen counter, now sprinkled deep with wintry drifts of flour. There isn’t room for me, so I adjourn with Mary’s husband, Zolton, to his garage woodshop. Much like the kitchen, a fine layer of fragrant dust covers everything. Except here it’s native hardwoods -- black cherry, sugar maple and black walnut -- that perfume the air.
It’s chilly amidst the saws and stacks of lumber and what mortal male can resist the allure of fresh-baked anything? So inside we go, to savor warm slices perfected by butter and homemade Then we tell – what else? – bread stories.
“When I was a kid in East Lansing about all we had was Wonder bread,” says Zolton, with a grimace. “But it did make great bait. We’d roll it into little dough balls and fish for carp in the Red Cedar River."
Back in the 1960s and 70s, most American bread was tasteless and nondescript – little more than a delivery vehicle for bologna and mustard or the ubiquitous PB&J.
“My first taste of real bread,” I reminisced, “was Germany, 1984. We were in the field, on Army maneuvers, sick to death of field rations. So a guy sneaks into town and comes back with a loaf of real rye. It was flat-out incredible – great texture, nutty and yeasty flavor, a full meal in its own right. He’d also got us a few bottles of Pilsen lager, and we ate on the floor of a hiker’s hostel as moonlight streamed in through the window. Ah, youth.”
We talk some more, then it’s time for the kids to see the woodshop. On his lathe Zolton turns out two spinning tops for the girls, as shavings of black cherry speckle his sweatshirt. The wood itself even smells like cherries. And the tops are elegant simplicity personified. When spun on a table, they rotate for a minute or more.
In a world gone mad for efficiency and profit some say there’s no time for such handmade indulgence. That’s what toy stores and electric bread makers are for (there’s one of the latter rusting in our kitchen closet). But as Wendell Berry says, before using a labor-saving device we should ask this question: “What better thing will we do with the time that we’ve saved?”
Nothing, as far I can tell. From the grist of these few bright hours, what machine could ever fashion a finer afternoon?
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