bread

I can’t remember when exactly baking became a hobby of mine. Making sugar cookies at Christmas was always a major event – I couldn’t stop at simply frosting the cookies with one color, or even worse, only coating them with rend and green sprinkles before baking – I had to decorate each one with at least two colors of homemade powdered sugar frosting (the canned stuff doesn’t flow the right way).

When I finally moved out of the dorms into an apartment with a kitchen converted into a hallway, my love for baking was revived. I pulled out my roommate’s Joy of Cooking and made banana bread, but not without my favorite ingredient: chocolate chips. It turned out wonderfully, and even made a convert of my formerly banana bread hatin’ roommate.

Later in the fall I decided I needed to make pumpkin chocolate chip bread. I found a recipe online and was faced with a conundrum: the recipe called for one can of pumpkin puree and made 3 loaves of bread. I only had one loaf pan, not to mention, what the hell am I going to do with three loaves of bread? I could cut the recipe in thirds, but oh the math, not to mention, what the hell am I going to do with 2/3 of a can of pumpkin puree? Three loaves it would have to be, baked in shifts. I made two on a Friday night and brought one loaf over to my friend’s house in exchange for alcohol. It was eaten like finger food by people who thought they didn’t like pumpkin flavored stuff. Drunken people showed up later, and one fellow asked if he could be my best friend after trying a piece.

I think around then I subconsciously realized that no baker is a selfish baker, even if sometimes because of the sheer amount of product. I’ll make a batch of cookies with the intention of sending some to a friend as a present, and with the leftovers sitting on the table, I find it amusing when my roommates timidly ask if then can have one. No, I just made 4 dozen cookies for myself. Of course you can have some! Part of the fun of baking is having other people eat and enjoy what you just made.

Later I found a different recipe for banana bread that I ended up falling in love with. It was so simple – no messy Crisco, instead just melted butter. All the ingredients mix together using only a spoon, and I soon figured out that making banana bread is a great stress reliever.

This year, I started hanging around more at this coffee shop in Madison called the Catacombs. It is run by volunteers, you can get a cup of coffee for a dollar, and if you want something to go they give it to you in a reusable mason jar instead of a paper cup. (Speaking of which, there are some coffee shops that could really learn a lesson from this – if I’m drinking coffee or tea in house, PLEASE DON’T PUT IT IN A PAPER CUP. Worst thing ever.) I was walking out when I saw a sign with open shifts available, including baking positions. Hey, I can do this. I signed up and signed on.

My first day was rather easy. I made some bread from scratch, kneading the dough and everything. My parents have a bread machine and I always thought it was pretty cool, until I found something cooler: making bread with your own fucking two hands. It’s not that I’m against all forms of technology or anything, but I think that sometimes it makes us forget what we were once capable of doing without the technology. Case in point: I was a nanny for my neighbor’s family for about a week and a half one summer; I watched the kids and drove them places while the parents were in Spain. Even though the family lived next door in a similarly sized home, sometimes it seemed like they were a class above us: they had a milkman, a housecleaner, and bought most of their groceries off a website called Simon Delivers. My new task was going to be: order groceries online and have them delivered to our door! Oh how novel! Except for one problem: their cable internet did not seem to be working, and the fixing guys weren’t doing a very good job at the fixing. At this point I started to freak out: how are we going to get food? I think we have enough to make it for a while, there’s lots of frozen stuff…these are seriously the thoughts that ran through my head until the light bulb switched on and I realized that in the olden, or perhaps current days people would go to an actual grocery store to get their food. Phew, we actually aren’t going to starve.

Where was I going with this? Ah yes, bread. I haven’t worked a lot yet, and I wouldn’t say that I am confident baker in all respects, but I’m looking forward to learning more techniques that I can take with me. If you’ve never baked anything yourself, now is the time. Get some bread and sugar and whatever else you need, but whatever you do, don’t use a mix. Make a quick bread, cookies, or maybe go all out and work through the kneading and rising process. Maybe it won’t be for you but you’ll never know until you’ve tried.

originally written february 2004.