The Power of Bread
Just a few years ago, I was regularly lifting 50 pound bags of flour at my bakery. The truck would pull in beside the loading dock, the driver would pile the bags of organic unbleached unenriched flour onto a handcart and I along with my staff would transfer them onto the flour rack in our pantry. Sometimes, if I felt particularly strong, I would grab two at a time just to remind myself that I could still lift 100 pounds at once. Back then, each bag of flour always felt like a gift. I knew that with this flour I could continue to make bread for another couple of weeks and that was my security blanket.
These days, I measure flour by 5 pound bags. But when I make my grocery run, I don’t see a lot of flour on the shelves. I’m hearing the same thing from my friends. As the flour levels decrease, we are all a little bit nervous. Will we be able to find more before we run out? My love and passion for baking have not diminished with time since I left the bakery three years ago. Instead, I find myself working out details in recipes that I never had the time for when I was producing larger amounts of bread. Back then I always said, “I wish I would be put out of business so everyone would get the same enjoyment out of baking as me.” Now, finally, I’m hearing of folks returning to baking or starting to bake and so the flour bins and shelves are mostly empty. And each pound I find is again a gift.
What is it about bread? It is truly one of the staples of many cultures around the world and humans have been making and eating it for ages. When I bake bread today, I imagine a baker putting a loaf into the woodfired ovens of Pompeii, Italy, 2,000 years ago before the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius covered the oven and preserved it for us to see today. There’s a whole lot of history behind my gestures and I’m glad to continue the practice.
In my years as a baker, I found out how many people carry precious memories of bread and breadmaking. It takes us back to other worlds by scent and flavor. It brings back memories long forgotten. As it bakes, it releases smells that are proven to make us kinder and happier. I also find that in making bread, I use all of my senses: I touch the dough as I knead and shape, watch it through each phase, smell it as it bubbles and later bakes, hear it crackle as it cools and taste it once I can.
In these times, bread seems to bring comfort as well as sustenance. Is it the heat of the oven or the smells or just knowing that a solid loaf of bread sits on the table, a real tangible item amidst all the intangibles that our brains are coping with? Right now, I have enough flour to last me a couple of weeks. While news swirls around me, I’m happy to be in the kitchen baking. And though the future is uncertain, I’ll take it step by step, as long as my flour supply remains steady.
