Rising to the occasion

Lately I've been on a bread-making jaunt. My last one was in January. They usually last a couple of weeks at a time, but I'm hopeful I'll be able to sustain this one for a longer period of time. I finally found a good all-purpose whole wheat bread that my youngest dd will eat. It soft and mild tasting, with no added crunchiness. This is essential to her favorite breakfast - a piece of bread with peanut butter and chocolate chips; milk-chocolate, not semi-sweet.

So far this week I've made bread three times; a whole grain oat bread, Vienna bread and easy overnight-started bread, all from Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. I never used to have much success with many of the breads from this cookbook. Now that I have a Kichenaid stand mixer, I realize I never kneaded the bread long enough by hand.

Making bread is part of my desire to live my principles and eat as locally as I can. I have to be careful, however, as I tend to easily place myself in a box and then feel horrendous guilt and failure when, for example, I buy kiwi at the grocery store.

No matter what else, if anything, I accomplish during any given day, if I have made bread I feel successful. There's something about working the dough with my hands and feeling it come to life that nurtures my need to create. It took me years to finally allow myself to use a machine to knead the bread; it always somehow felt like cheating.

Years ago, when my MIL was still alive, she visited my family for a week. Hilde made bread for her entire family of 12 children for years and years. Though in her later years we tended not to get along well, this visit sticks out in my mind for things we had in common.

During her visit, I made bread at least a couple of times. I remember one kind was a whole grain raisin bread. Hilde and I discussed our love of bread baking and how it was a manifestation of our love for our families. Though I chose to bake bread, Hilde, as a farm wife and mother of a dozen, really had no choice; yet we shared similar feelings for the process and the result.

I remember agreeing with her that a perfect salutation would be, "May your loaves rise high and light."

Though she has been gone now for several years, every time I make bread I think of my mother-in-law and this very basic connection we will always share.