One of the hardest things to deal with during our recent move was to go through each day without my own humble home-made bread. This sounds crazy, I know, but right from childhood it truly has become a kind of comfort preference in life.
When my granddaughter went to university in a different Canadian province she took some small bread pans, a bowl and a sturdy wooden spoon with her. It was that important for her to have her own bread. Needless to say, she became popular on campus! |
Growing up in a small Zululand village in South Africa, I never tasted good bread. It was the flour, you see. We did have a bakery, and they did produce bread. It always had a grey sort of tinge, and I never liked the texture.
Our mother occasionally tried her hand at baking a few loaves. That was how I learned the difference between home-made and bought. Knowing what I know now, her bread wasn’t all that great. You’d never have known that though.
I was struck by the difference between commercially produced and home-made, in a lasting impression that has only become more solid through the many years I’ve lived on this earth.
The aroma of baking bread would permeate the home. Six children with voracious appetites descended upon it before it was even cold. It vanished down to the last crumb. All my mother’s labour disappeared in the eagerness of her children to grab their fair share of this treat.
In effect, it truly was like casting pearls before swine. We didn’t appreciate the work it took from her, working in the heat generated by our huge, Aga range. Just the taste. The texture. The satisfaction in our stomachs.
Funny thing. In all my time growing up, I never heard of gluten intolerance. Of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Of Crohn’s disease. Of emulsifiers in bread. Of medications taken at every meal to enable your body to digest the food you put into it.
Food has changed. Almost all of it that you see in wonderfully illustrated packages of various types is highly processed. So what does that mean? Look at the compulsory labelling, and it becomes clear. Many of the
ingredients listed are not things you’d ever see in a home kitchen. This applies to the bread you eat as well.
Go into any medium-sized supermarket, and the first thing that will confront you is a wall of convenient foods, wonderfully displayed. And yes, the size of the deli is important. That’s where the crowds are, drooling over food, trying to determine their purchases.
You really throw caution to the winds at the deli section. From the vendor’s perspective, it’s one big opportunity to sell major quantities of meals without any obligation to reveal their ingredients.
And you, careful you, whose eagle eyes examine labels on your foods in the supermarket shelves, suddenly become willing to ask for a small, medium or large plastic container of whatever temptingly displayed food has caught your eye. Potato salad. Pasta salad. No questions asked. No labels. It’s buy a convenience food or cook when you don’t feel like it.
Look at the bread. Shelves and shelves of it. Must be 40 varieties. You read the labels. Then you discover almost all of them actually contain the same emulsifiers and preservative chemicals. Not one of them has what you would make your bread with.
Bread at home has simple ingredients. Flour, water, salt, yeast. That’s it, except if you decide to try your hand at an even simpler sourdough loaf. You spend fascinating days producing your own yeast starter from the air!
The book is Bread Every Day, by Jack Sturgess.
But here’s a treat for you–you can make a beginner loaf any time you like.
I’ve written almost twenty posts through the years about bread. It should be the staff of life. Unfortunately, there are many folks these days that have never tasted the homemade kind. I’m handing you over to teacher Jack!