I was probably doomed to become a baker and cook. One of my earliest
memories involves food preparation and the magic it can bring.
I was making mudpies in the sandbox, mixing the sand with
water in those little aluminum pie tins that pot pies come in.
I set three of them on one of the railroad ties that bounded the sandbox and
trudged off with the watering can to the pump to get more water to make more
pies. (Apparently I never did know when to stop.)
When I returned, there in place of the three mudpies were
three cookies, spaced just so, as the mudpies had been. I still remember that
sensation of wonder and disbelief. I knew it couldn’t be, but yet there they
were, and the mudpies were gone. I was frozen in that moment, staring at them, until
I glanced over to where Mother was peeking out the dining room window, relishing
every moment. I don’t know what she did with the mudpies. But those cookies
were oatmeal raisin, and they were still warm from the oven.
Is it any wonder that one of my earliest souvenirs from a
family vacation was a cookie jar I named Ruff? It had a dog on it. Eventually I
broke it. But I did make cookies to go in it, and no doubt an enormous mess in
the kitchen.
I went on to make a great many more cookies in that kitchen,
eventually graduating to making bread.
In the ‘70s, my mother got into yoga, the Whole Earth Catalog, Adelle
Davis’ “Diet for a Small Planet,” and natural foods. She made copious
quantities of a very sturdy whole wheat bread. We once each made a batch, stirring and kneading side-by-side
on the counter because we needed four loaves instead of the usual two. It’s
that bread, fresh from the oven and slathered with butter, that is the ultimate
comfort food that I associate with my mother. Dave refers to it as Real Bread.
All others are pretenders.
This weekend it was time to go for the therapeutic process of kneading real bread. I
will think of my mother always when I make it, and when I glance around at my home
filled with pretties she gave me along with the ability to appreciate them. And
while enjoying a proper cup of tea in a beautiful cup. She once gave me a
magnet adorned with a beautiful tea cup and the Barbara Pym-esque phrase that
we could appreciate and truly understand: “In the autumn, the leaves on her tea
cup were particularly vibrant.”
I realized that even several years ago I'd started to write about her in the past tense:
R.I.P., Mom.
As my brother often said in a vaguely blasphemous phrase
while passing food around the family dinner table, “This do in remembrance of
Ma.”
Wholegrain wheat bread
I'm not sure of the name of the cookbook this came from. It was a very slim volume of wholegrainish recipes with a brown cover that came out in the 1970s.
Ingredients
7-plus cups whole wheat flour, divided
1 cup powdered milk
1/2 cup brown sugar, plus 1 tablespoon, divided
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 packages yeast
3 cups warm water (about 105 to 110 F, or bottle warm on your wrist)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
Method
Blend 6 cups of whole wheat flour, powdered milk, 1/2 cup brown sugar and salt in a large bowl and set aside.
In a large bowl, add 3 cups warm water to 1 tablespoon brown sugar and the yeast. Let proof about 10 minutes or so until the yeast has activated and the surface looks frothy.
Stir in half of the flour mixture into the yeast mixture, adding 1 cup or so at a time and stirring after each addition. Stir in the oil. Then add the remaining flour mixture 1 cup at a time. Add remaining 1 cup flour, and enough additional flour as needed to make a dough stiff enough to knead. Knead on a lightly floured board for 8 to 10 minutes, sprinkling in more flour if needed to keep it from being too sticky to handle. You're aiming for it to start to gain some elasticity and smoothness, although this bread is never going to reach the baby's bottom smoothness stage.
Put dough into a greased bowl and cover, turning once to grease it. Let rise 1 hour in a warm, draft-free spot. Divide dough in half. Shape each half into a loaf and put into 2 buttered bread pans. Cover with a cloth and let rise 1/2 hour.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake bread for 15 minutes at 400. Then reduce heat to 350 and bake for 20 to 25 minutes more.
Makes two very dense loaves. It actually keeps fairly well, something I never knew growing up because it was never around that long before it was time to make more.
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