Daily Bread 

            I'm not sure about the garden this year. Last year, we attempted green beans but something's changed in the soil around our place and the fertile spot that, as a child, kept me well-stocked through the fall and winter now produces, at best, scraggly weeds.
            Perhaps I could find another spot in the yard. With food prices going up, up, up, and quality heading in the other direction, there's a good motivation to grow our own. But age and necessity have provided another option, and its proven a real hit with our house: bread.

            While our family was stationed in Germany a few years back, we had plenty of opportunity to enjoy the high quality and low price of food found at the regular supermarket. Massive heads of Boston lettuce for less than a buck. Scores of potato dishes or frozen vegetable mixtures that you'd have to go to a five-star restaurant to beat. A single aisle dedicated to yogurt -- none of it low-fat, and all of it better tasting than any pudding or ice cream. The only thing they couldn't seem to manage were simple orange juice and a decent steak.

            But it was the bread that I remember the best. I don't even remember how many varieties there were at the tiny bakeries on street corners, never mind the ones inside the large supermarkets (even Walmart). All of it fantastic, and all of it cheap.

            Three long pepperoni twisted rolls for less than $2. Baguettes with no preservatives that stayed fresh for days. Large crusty white rolls, which proved a godsend to a teething Sofie, for only 10 cents. And sunflower seed bread so dense with kernels that it was referred to as an "egel" (hedgehog).
            Main ingredients: flour, salt, water, yeast. Not very hi-tech. But even the worst bread here costs twice as much as First World country, that at the time had almost $4 gas but managed $1 bread.
            But I put up with it. That is until gas went above $3. Some switch must have tripped been tripped, and I broke out the until-then-unused German bread recipe book. First up was the sunflower
hedgehog. That required sourdough. Real sourdough. Couldn't find it anywhere, so I finally found a recipe to make it.

            I never knew it could take so long and so much effort to make something go bad. Once we added it to the bread batter, the question arose whether it had gone bad in the right way. What if it went bad
badly? Would it make us sick?

            Being the only man in a house full of women, the only answer I could come up with was, "Heat kills everything." Besides, I was hungry.
            And it does. We ended up with an oblong brick, which while tasty, was heavy enough to be classified as a deadly weapon if raised in anger. It takes two rounds on our toaster set on high to get it warmed up enough to spread anything on it. And, as far as I can tell, it has bran or any other fiber beat --- use with caution.

            Our attempts at white bread have been even more tasty, but far more benign and breathtakingly simple. With an active and hungry five-year-old around, this stuff goes quickly. It also makes a fun Sunday morning ritual --- baking day. Kneading is the best part.  There's little better for a kid than to sink their hands into sweet-smelling goo.

            So reflecting on the possibility of the garden, it may lie fallow this year, replaced by the bread stone. I'll happily trade away the damage done to my back and knees in a garden for a few minutes of pounding dough. The onset of old age may have been the reasons human went from hunter-gatherers to baking grains in the first place.
            Now if we can just set up a barter this summer with a gardener with an excess of cucumbers, tomatoes or green beans...

5/8/08