Bread

Bread is fabric, formed without any input from the maker other than key ingredients and heat.  There's no knitting, crocheting, or otherwise manipulating string, thread, or yarn through space to create a cloth.  This cloth comes out of an oven hot and three-dimensional and, once cut, is a two-dimensional object for soaking up a plate's sauciness, or for hosting delicious condiments like peanut butter, honey, Nutella.  

To create a bread from scratch is a meditative process to me: mix raw ingredients, let rise slightly, knead on a clean countertop - fold, turn a quarter, fold, repeat - then let rise a longer time.  Squish down the air buildup caused by yeast organisms, form into a loaf, then put in a pan for final rising.  After this add heat.  The process is one that needs a decent segment of time, but what better way to savor the homestead than producing food from scratch?  Hence, a meditation.  

When it comes out of the oven its fleshy form has been converted into food fabric.  It has transformed from separate entities of flour, honey, water, and salt into a cohesive final product.  The yeast ate the sweet honey and churned out gaseous fluffiness.  There is no evidence of its raw forms, only a delicious sustenance to last me and my family a couple more days.  The story of this bread is more interesting than that of the store bought, which I picture is by shiny machines sandwiched side by side in factory warehouses.  

Knowing the ingredients, the simplicity of the six of them, is another fulfilling outcome.  When I compare water, olive oil, honey, flour, salt, and yeast to those of the store bought brand - all twenty-four of them with many ending in "-ate” (as in sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium iodate and sulfate), "-ide" (as in mono- and diglycerides, calcium peroxide, and azodicarbonamide), and the smattering of x's and z's that somehow indicate their removal, their detachment from our normal everyday lives, from the common things we know and can touch and can manipulate without needing a mask - it makes me want to bake my own more often.  I'm toasting a slice now.  

Shared on The Peaceful Mom