Késsinnimek - Roots - RacinesTHE STAFF OF LIFE
by Louise Dubrule
by Louise Dubrule
“Give us this day our daily bread,” Jesus taught us to say. Bread is mentioned more than once in the Bible. There is reference to women who measure flour and oil to make bread. There is the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, and Jesus used bread at the Last Supper to symbolize His own body. He calls himself ‘the bread of life.’
My heritage is French-Canadian, and all my aunts made bread regularly. I can see Aunt Marie Plante standing at her long, oilcloth-covered kitchen table in Megantic, dumping ingredients into a large graniteware basin. Without missing a beat in the conversation, she mixed and kneaded and pummeled the dough until she was satisfied with the texture. Before you knew it, there were loaves in pans, rising until they looked like little Conestoga wagons in a row.
Bread figures heavily in my memories of growing up, for Mama made bread often, and I continue the tradition partly because it connects me to the past. We didn’t have sandwiches as a rule except for picnics or the odd school lunch when the weather was really ugly, but bread in some form accompanied every meal. Our Sunday dinner was a big affair, so sometimes Sunday supper was a soup plate with broken bread sprinkled with grated maple sugar and covered with a bit of milk. Bread and milk made a good bedtime snack, too. The very best toast was made by buttering slices of bread and putting them directly on top of the wood-burning stove, but Mama made us clean up after ourselves when we did this.
Judith Krug, a faithful reader, wrote that her mother and grandmother baked bread and they said a prayer over the bread before it was baked. She wondered if I knew what the prayer was. After much research, the closest I found was a reference to the fact that bread was supposed to rise just as Christ had; indeed some bakers inscribe a cross in the top of their loaves.
The aroma of baking bread is such a special one that the bread-making machines became quite a fad for a few years. A friend received one as a gift about five years ago. She managed to remove it from the box, but that was all, so she passed it on to us recently. The directions were clear as to the fact that everything had to be very carefully measured. Now, I’m a ‘by feel and by eye’ cook just as Mama was, so it’s no surprise that the first loaf we produced with the machine was tasty but exceedingly chewy and crusty. I was much more precise with the second loaf and it was decidedly better. To tell you the truth, though, to me the machine is more of a curiosity than a useful appliance.
We have memories of bakeries in Germany where the dark loaves sat unwrapped on the shelves, and little children carried the bread home…sometimes dropping them several times on the way. The crusty exteriors were equal to the journey home. In England the pastry shops offered sweet dough confections, similar to our cinnamon rolls. Sandwiches in Irish pubs were made with hearty oat bread.
Many cultures have developed their own forms of bread. Our family tradition calls for an “International Day” on December 26 when we choose a country or ethnic group and plan a meal with those traditional recipes. We spend days pouring over cookbooks, and email messages fly back and forth with ideas. Naturally, we find the proper bread and add that to the day’s menu. We’ve tried Indian naan that has yogurt as an ingredient, Italian foccacia with sun dried tomatoes and oregano, deep dark rye for dipping in goulash, Irish soda bread, Middle Eastern pita, and oatmeal scones. We’ve made a lacy bread that uses cottage cheese in the dough, a substantial honey-oat bread from old New England, and an herb bread that is redolent with oregano, rosemary, thyme, parsley, onion, and cracked pepper. We liked them all.
Bread choices in the United States sometimes depend on the region of the country. New England cooks make a steamed brown bread to go with baked beans, and their corn bread is called ‘johnny cake’ (a corruption of journey cake) because it has a custard base with eggs and sugar so it isn’t as crumbly and it keeps longer. It is generally believed that the best bagels come from New York City.
In the southern U.S., biscuits are a matter of pride for a household, and a wife’s touch is judged by how light and high her biscuits are. Nearly every café in Texas offers a good hearty breakfast of biscuits topped with a sausage-laden white gravy. Here in the Southwest, Mexican flat tortillas are a staple in many homes, whether they are made of white flour or yellow corn meal. Texas cornbread is often spiced up with jalapenos or other chilies.
The very earliest residents of this part of the country didn’t have flour, but they made a paste of pounded yucca roots and cooked it over an open fire so that they had a cracker of sorts. Today the Tigua tribe in El Paso makes and sells a wonderful round loaf of bread that they bake in their outdoor beehive ovens. The Navajos of Arizona prefer their specialty of fry bread.
One of my favorite recipes is for a French bread that is quite authentic. There is no milk to scald, it has no shortening, and it rises quickly. Best of all, with just a tiny change it makes two pizza crusts or a dozen pita breads. I’ve given out this recipe many times over the years.
The older we became, the more often I baked bread, for it became a source of comfort to have a piece of fragrant toast before bed. Moe found tea and toast soothing when he was undergoing chemotherapy. I'm alone now, but I still bake bread for toast and to have on hand when I have guests for a meal. Now that the holidays are approaching, I must have a few loaves on hand to make French toast for a gang. The family is going to expect an English tea ring to nibble on while we open gifts on Christmas morning, and the grandchildren look forward to Memere's rolls at dinner as well as at bedtime.
Do I still buy bread in the store? Of course I do, but I choose something with character and substance so that it doesn’t turn to Elmer’s glue in the mouth. These days bread is often omitted from the menu because people are counting carbs on any of several different diets. I’m sorry for them, for they’re missing a bit of life’s good stuff. We ask for our daily bread in prayer, and I really want mine!
Késsinnimek - Roots - Racines
Copyright © 2003 & 2004 & 2005 & 2006 & 2007 Norm Léveillée
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Created 1 Feb 2003