Bread is a funny thing, isn’t it? One of the biggest staples of our entire culinary lives, it has presence in almost every single aspect of our meals — dry, buttered, sliced, jammed — we serve it in the most humble and fancy of situations. Whether used for PB&J sandwiches or as crumpets for High Tea, bread has suits for every occasion.
At its root, it’s so very simple — flour, water, yeast. Various modifiers exist to enhance flavor, texture, and presentation, but those are the basics. With a little simple science involving the gluten proteins in the flour, our soggy lump of wet ground wheat turns into a fluffy, soft, spongy, and utterly delectable concoction.
Simpler foods exist — heck, most fruits involve far less labor and toil, and don’t require any modification to the way they come off the plant in order to eat them. Â For bread to be viable, you have to harvest the grain, separate it from the rest of the plant, dry it, grind it to a flour, mix it with water, yeast, and other ingredients, kneed it, let it rise, kneed it again, form it, and bake it.
Despite all this, it still remains one of our biggest staples.   What a curious thing to choose, I think.
I bit the bullet and made some homemade bread the other night, since my son is allergic to milk and soy, I was able to make a good loaf without any of those items and I turned out two of them.   I have new appreciation for the effort involved, as it took probably 3 hours of time and plenty of elbow grease, but there’s nothing quite liek the texture of good bread when done — and the smell!  Well, let’s just say, the candle makers haven’t gotten that one correct yet.
As you can see in these photos, the loaves turned out well, and Keston had a great time watching daddy be a baker.
So, dear reader — what’s your thoughts on this primal and universal of foods?
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