By Bread Alone

As I sit here I can smell a loaf of bread baking in the oven. Nothing special, just a loaf of plain sandwich bread. A loaf that looks quite unremarkable but is fundamental. I started baking about the same time I started cooking in earnest - when I got married. I could already cook having learned, literally, at my Grandmother Surro's knee. I'd follow her around asking what she was doing and why and soaking it all in for later.

She always had something wonderful to put on the table no matter how many of her 8 children, and their families showed up - or so it seemed to me. As I child Sunday dinner was always at her house, in the large basement kitchen/dining room that seemed to accommodate all of us. I would always fall asleep, where ever I could find a spot, to the smell of food and the sound of conversation.

But she didn't bake much. She didn't really have to because there were plentiful, wonderful Italian bakeries in Trenton, New Jersey. I started baking because I wanted to prove I could and it was kind of fun. I started watching the early cooking shows on PBS and wanted to try everything. Bread was just one more thing to try but after tasting the fruit of my efforts that was the end for store bought bread and I've been baking bread ever since.

The thing about baking is that it is chemistry and if you make a mistake in a cake or pastry you are sunk. No so with bread. Sure it is chemistry; the amount of flour, yeast, water; the reaction of the yeast on the sugar. Is the yeast alive, can it eat and create the gas that gives the bread the rise? But bread is a lot more forgiving. If you only have a teaspoon of yeast and 3 to 4 cups of flour you can make the most tasty of breads. You don't even need the yeast if you just mix flour and water and let it get the natural yeasts out of the air. In a couple of days you have a starter.

Add an egg and lessen the water. Use milk instead of water. Sprinkle herbs or spices into the flour. As long as the yeast is alive and has something to feed on you have bread. Or do you even need yeast? What about flatbreads and crackers. Well you need yeast even for a flatbread but not crackers. And crackers, to me, are a kind of bread.

Why all the fuss about something you don't even think about when you go to the grocery store? What I say is have you ever tasted home made bread? Had a simple sandwich on it? Buttered it after toasting? Dipped it in gravy, olive oil, sauce? If you have not done that with a home made bread, devoid of preservatives, hot out of the oven you have not eaten.

Does man live by bread alone? I could as long as it is bread I baked!