Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Ode to bread

I once ate a simple lunch with a friend. Just salad and some nice french bread. My friend took a bite of the bread, and then let out a deep sigh. "Why do women love bread so much?" she mused. If I was Dave Barry, I would say at this point "I am not making this up!" Well, I'm not.

I don't know. In our house, everyone loves fresh bread. The healthy, presliced 12 grain stuff we could care less about. But the gorgeous still warm round loaves from bakeries...holy cow.

We feel like we have to eat the whole loaf in one sitting. "Hey, it won't be any good tomorrow. We might as well enjoy it! It's what the baker would have wanted."

You know the saying "Wine is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy"? I think that could just as easily apply to bread. Hey, it's in the bible. "Give us this day our daily bread." BREAD! Not cereal, or meat, or booze, or bacon - delightful as those things may be.

I love bread so much that I decided to try to bake my own bread. In loaves. Whole grain! Because...um...health. It turned out like doorstops. I had two of them. The dog wouldn't even touch it.

I gave up on the whole grain flour and moved on the the hardcore powdered white stuff. Sweet success! After just one try, I made a passable foccacia.

There's a lesson in here somewhere, but it'll take more coffee for me to figure it out.
Happy Wednesday, everyone!

7 comments:

jenni said...

I love homemade bread, too (or "artisan" breads from the bakers). Nothing beats warm, soft inside-crunchy outside bread!

Make homemade butter and it's just heaven on a slice!
(heavy cream, fill half an empty jar; shake until your arm falls off and the whey separates from the cream leaving you a ball of butter; press out any remaining liquid--I just smooshed solid mass against the side of a bowl--and then enjoy. Add a pinch of salt if you want salted butter. Refridgerate just in case you didn't get out all the liquid, which will make the butter go rancid fast!)

JootJoot said...

Ohhh how I love homemade bread! If you want to try a multigrain bread that comes out quite perfect, try this recipe
http://www.ourbestbites.com/2009/11/no-knead-multigrain-bread-in-jar.html
It is wonderful!!! I make it all the time and it is great -- it's not completely whole grain, but at least has some in it!

Kitty Vane said...

I love bread! Any kind of bread makes me happy, from dark, dense rye bread (the kind you can only get here, what the rest of the world calls rye bread doesn't hold a candle to our "ruisleipä") to fluffy white toast, I'm all for it! There really isn't anything more heavenly than fresh bread with maybe a bit of butter on top.

Sadly my bread baking attempts have resulted in doorstops and the one time I made buns they came out more like hockey pucks.

Babamoon said...

nothing beats a beautiful warm crusty buttered french bread baton... yum!

Erica said...

sometimes I think I would gladly live on bread!

Teddy Started It said...

And who was the crazy guy who said "man shall not live by bread alone"? (Oh yeah, one of those bible guys. Oops! Guess I'll be dodging lightning all day.) But seriously, where there's bread, there's love and happiness and contentment - at least for this girl. I'm not sure I need much else. OK, maybe a slice or two of bacon;p

Absolutely Small said...

Jenni: It never occurred to me to try making butter! Does it taste differently from the stuff you buy at the store?

Joot: Thank you for the link! I'll check it out!

Kitty: Maybe bread is the universal language...

Moonangelnay: Word.

Erica: Me, too!

Teddy: Ha ha! I thought of that one too. I guess we both better watch out for random smitings!

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