Almost a Year

I am Many Women

When sky and street merge in sullen grayness

and black trees stir in sleep,

my stove becomes a hearth.

I am many women who have looked at rain

through a flap of hide, from a hand hewn door,

and felt secure against a threatening world,

blessed within warm walls and sheltering roof.

Hands deep in flour,

powdered grain from a million fields

garnered in sweating sunlight,

I am many women who kneaded resilient dough

with strong hands . . .

brown, red, yellow and white hands.

Folding and stretching, shaping

smoothly contoured loaves

rich with the smell of yeast.

(Bread is like nothing so much as bread,

sacred in its own identity.)

The sky trades snow for night,

and the scent of baking loaves

is calm benediction for my home.

I am many women who have taken bread from an oven,

and breaking it . . .

felt consecrated.

--Patti Linn, from Gourmet Magazine, as quoted in Ada Lou Roberts's Favorite Breads from Rose Lane Farm (Hearthside Press, 1960)

It was almost a year ago that bread changed my life. For a project at church, I pledged to make my family's bread for 40 days, in commemoration of the anniversary of Earth Day. The catch was that I didn't really know how to bake. Thus began this amazing journey with bread as my guide--generous lessons from a person whom I now call friend, getting to know other people and their bread stories (including amazingly, the past owner of my house whose bread cookbook quite coincidentally came into my hands some 50 years later!), reviving my own grandmother's bread recipe some 35 years after her death, the acquisition of new skills from kneading dough to forming loaves with a better understanding of "doubled in bulk" and other hazy ideas, receiving a bread lesson and sourdough starter from my friend at Bloodroot, feeling more connected to women of the past (as in this opening poem), passing along a little knowledge and a lot of enthusiasm by teaching a workshop on no-knead bread and encouraging other friends to try it, plus educating our bread palates so to speak, decreasing our environmental impact with all those plastic bread bags, even protecting our health from high-fructose corn syrup and preservatives, which never go into homemade bread.

The best part is that I've continued to make and learn about bread in the months following my pledge (I could use some metaphor about my interest growing like yeast but will refrain). I really am just a beginner, with so much more I want to try. And it feels good that my creations are nourishing, to both body and soul (which I've recently realized is important for me in choosing a hobby). If people are coming over, I bake a loaf or make biscuits. If the kids want a snack, they like warm bread with honey. If there's a potluck at church or a friend in need, I take bread. Sure, a lot of it comes from my bread machine these days because kneading dough for 10 minutes or so is hard on my back, but no one seems to mind. And yep, all that refined flour isn't healthy in excess, but I'm incorporating more whole wheat and grains.

Anyway, it all came to mind recently when we picked up a used book at Bloodroot, one of the owner's old cookbooks, and found the quote above. She and I talked salt-rising bread, which recipe clipping she'd inserted in the book but never tried. I bought the book and know I'll be making that bread soon. It's a great journey, this bread thing . . . .

. . . but I wonder, if I could do something like it again this year for 40 days--not something Lenten like giving up chocolate or eating out or the like--what new thing would I like to try? What would you do?