A Season of Bread

Saving myself one loaf at a time

Bread and Knife, Walter Kuhn, 1934

It’s February. The raw and wretched month that eats your dearest wishes for breakfast and spits them out like black ice just before bed. My birthday is in February, as is Saint Valentine’s Day, but none of that helps. Birthdays are always a disappointment and Valentine’s Day just makes me think of massacres and Al Capone. There’s something in my chest. It’s sadness, maybe, or bronchitis. I’m not sure, but there it sits, day after day, like some cranky crouched creature, a burr on the inside. It demands my attention and slows me down.

We won’t even talk about what’s happening *out there*.

Much has been made of the therapeutic benefits of bread making. I’ve used the kitchen to quiet the demons — sweet tarts and custards, aromatic things roasting in the oven, bubbling pots on the stove. Once, I made a grand chocolate layered cake with a silky ganache late at night because it quite simply felt like the only way I might make it to sunrise. I survived and the cake was delicious, so I support kitchen therapy.

Bread, however, is largely uncharted territory for me. I know my way around the easy stuff — corn bread, lemon loaves and cranberry breads, blueberry-studded muffins and currant-flecked scones. It’s that magic equation of yeast, time, temperature, and muscle that intimidates me. Aside from the odd pizza crust, I am a babe in the real bread woods.

February, with its attendant disturbance in the breast, seems like the perfect time to embark on this new therapy. With the ill wind howling white out the window, I rolled up my sleeves to see if I could solve that magic equation. See if it settles the madness.

The Pullman Loaf and Sally Lunn Bread

Brioche is my holy grail, but those who know say it’s tricky and requires much work (best accomplished with the big snazzy mixer, which I don’t have and am not buying). For a minute, I thought the whole bread adventure was over before it started and I flailed around unhappily, like a toddler. Then I found a solution.

The Pullman Loaf.

Essentially a plain white sandwich loaf, this was appealing because I had all the ingredients and it seemed easy. I used Chris Kimball’s recipe from The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook, because I like this sentence:

Of course, you can simply bake this bread in any old bread pan if you don’t care much about the shape of the loaf, which is what I do.

Key elements here — simply, any old, don’t care much, and, from the expert, which is what I do. Chris knows his audience.

This was a great place to start because — it worked! I felt moderately proud of myself because it required yeast and specific temps and time and kneading. I got messy and a little frustrated, but it was basically a stress-free experience. After a little work and a modicum of patience, I was rewarded with pretty, warm loaves perfect for slicing and slathering with butter all afternoon.

Emboldened, I next chose the Sally Lunn Bread, largely because Deb from Smitten Kitchen did such a marvelous job marketing to me. She speaks my language (“lazy,” “weep gently with joy”) and there’s a story. I’ll let Deb tell you:

Like any food story worth tucking into, the story of Sally Lunn Bread comes with drama over its origins — Was it originally made by Protestant refugees, who called them “soleil et lune” or sun and moon cakes? Was it named for Solange Luyon, a pastry cook in Bath, England who for decades sold these buns on the street? Was knowing how to bake it truly essential to being a successful housekeeper, as this 1884 book, suggests?

I love stories, I am lazy, and I suspect that gentle, joyful weeping could be part of a successful therapeutic regimen. I’m all in.

This bread was so easy, it felt like a cheat. There was yeast, temperature, and time; but no kneading, no mess, no fuss. It wasn’t much more trouble than a quick bread, but yielded something like a poor-man’s brioche — a hint of egg, a hint of sweet, still warm and slathered with butter.

There are too many people in my house and each has his or her own chest-sitter, provoking theatre and delusions of high-flown personal crisis in the midst of what is surely just run-of-the-mill February. There are too many chafing souls in this space.

To have a thing, a focus, a place for my hands, a reason to watch the clock and, in the end, a product to show the wild-eyed group — see, I’ve been busy — this is the gift of bread making. It feels important, contributory, ancient and real. It’s creative and meditative, a ministration of sorts, leaving the kitchen warm and the air perfumed with civility.

The Rustic White Bread

This feels like a setback.

I was hopeful. I’ve probably been called rustic behind my back. It seemed basic and foolproof, but also like “real” bread. It made two loaves, required more time and effort, and the pictures looked like a real baker was involved. Flour on the crust, slashes on the body, important-looking crumb.

The making was a pleasure and I felt briefly competent. The kneading was sensuous and hypnotic and felt surprisingly good to my aching thumbs and wrists. The rising was triumphant and the uncooked loaves, with their professional looking slashes across the top, held much promise.

The finished bread, however, was mediocre — dry and heavy, not nearly as pretty as the pictures. (Is anything ever as pretty as the pictures?) I substituted bread flour for all-purpose, so it’s probably my own fault (which feeds perfectly into my negative winter narrative). French toast, anyone?

I needed a victory. Something lush and gorgeous, something to massage that small crisis from the ribs and rearrange February into a string of worthy days. A decadent, crowning-glory bread.

The thing about bread-making that elevates it above all else in the kitchen is that it’s alive. Literally bursting and popping with life. You can watch it as it rises, hear it if you bend near. You are, with your life-worn hands, shaping life into artful sustenance, as the earliest hands once did. Massaging tiny beasties into a sustaining thing. We need this, a cycle of creation and consumption to build something sane and reliable.

Challah

I do worry that my motives aren’t noble. I’m all product over process. I love challah, I want challah, I want to have made challah. Do I actually want to make challah? I worry about the burden of expectation and the expectation of disappointment. But then, I worry.

Worry is where I begin with the challah, fresh on the heels of the rustic flop. I’m back to Deb at Smitten, as she was so kind to me with that lovely Sally Lunn. Her challah looks gorgeous (when will I learn) and she doesn’t seem daunted, so I tentatively dive.

The making of this bread was surprisingly manageable and satisfying. Though I came to it with mild panic, the process settled into a fairly simple, rhythmic activity that wove itself into the business of my day, seamlessly.

It rose three times, just the way it should, and smelled of real challah, even before baking. I clumsily braided it, and it forgave me. Once in the oven, if filled the house with such an aroma of good and happy Sunday mornings, that I felt all was well — or, at least, that all could be well. Maybe even would be.

Once out of the oven, I had my victory. My crowning glory bread. The one bread to save me. Aside from a bit too much darkening of the crust, it was luscious. One of my proudest moments in the kitchen. Two plump, gorgeous loaves — a bread that made me one of those insufferable food posters on social media, a bread that caused me to exclaim, “This tastes like real challah!” (My standards are decidedy low.)

Someone told me that, according to Chinese medicine, trouble in the chest is related to grief. Any and all grief, all the way back to childhood. And, unfortunately, the daily bread grief that comes with the paper each morning. Global crisis grief. In theory, if we identify and process each incident of grieving, the chest will clear. Easy as bread.

I need to make one more. It’s tempting to stop, to end on the high challah note and find a new therapy. But I’ve got days left in this wretched month and no better idea. I don’t expect to recreate the thrill of victory, I just hope to avoid failure. The burr is back and with it comes that familiar expectation of disappointment.

Seeking the last bread, I find myself standing in the bathroom at first light, gazing slack-jawed at a miracle sky. February gray shot through with forgotten color. Dawn in the crowded house, in the brief moment of silence, before the appearance of agitated winter souls.

It’s memory that I’m chasing, a desire to hold it in my hands, warm it in the oven, and eat it. I’m 13, that terrible turning age. It’s a sweltering summer day and, somehow, I am alone with my mother. Just us two, all day — a rare thing in a big family. She is painting the outside windows and we struggle together with a comically massive ladder, heaving it around the corner of the house, laughing so hard the tears overtake us and the task threatens to slide into calamity. She is also making bread. Portuguese Sweet Bread, it was called, and it was my favorite.

In this memory, when the painting is done and the bread is ready, I eat too much of it and lay baking in the sun on a blanket in the backyard with my mother and a stack of magazines, and I can almost feel the bread rising a little more in my overfull stomach. It is a delicious memory, a memory stuffed with sunshine and warmth, laughter and industry, my mother’s undivided attention and sweet warm bread.

My memory may be flawed. Why would a middle-aged woman be painting the house and making bread, all on the same stifling hot day? It seems crazy, but perhaps it happened this way. Perhaps she was wrestling the thing in her own chest. Truth and memory have an uneasy relationship. The bread was real, I can still smell it.

Portuguese Sweet Bread

Early in this bread project, I off-handedly mentioned this childhood bread to my husband. I told him that the memory reminded me of that Hawaiian grocery store bread and, lo and behold, that’s what it is — Wiki says so. I haven’t had it since I was a kid, but I’m hoping for a therapeutic stroll down memory lane.

Using Emeril’s recipe, the process seems familiar and comforting. Just five loaves in, I realize this bread-making business could become an easy habit. Do most of the work in the morning, with my coffee — no more than a half hour of focus — and let the beasties do the rest throughout the day. It’s become a thing I do now, or a thing I can do, instead of a distant aspirational thing. I make bread.

The process is almost ritual — measure, mix, knead, rise, punch, rise again, bake. The dough feels vaguely warm and alive in my hands and the rising is reliable. The result is, likewise, reliable — like a memory. Substantial, satisfying, a comfort. It’s, surprisingly, not that hard. It requires attention. It is rewarding. You will fail. You will thrill. The burr will not be eradicated. It can, however, be placated. Distraction is good.

I realize that my bread project neglected the thornier corners of baking — the sourdoughs and whole grains, the boules and batards. I’m not ready for a starter, though that sounds like where you should begin. I’m aware that I skew sweet, but it is February. These were my starter breads and, though I still want to own a brioche, I’m pretty proud of myself. That, combined with all the warm bread in my belly, has lightened the darkest month and calmed the crisis in the chest. I recommend it.

Go make some bread. I’m going to the library.

🥖 Lisa

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Author’s note: This essay is years old, from a distant February. I don’t eat much gluten these days, but maybe I should. I mean, why the fuck not, at this point?