Bread Day

 Saturday is traditionally Bread Day here at the bakery. The neighborhood wakes up to the smell of fresh bread, which brings them in to buy bread and what I have been told are the best scones in Austin. Squee!

 My love affair with bread didn't start till late, I was 20! Grandma was a pastry chef, not a baker, so my first things were lattice topped cherry pies (Thanks to my sister Pam for walking me through that one at 6!), cakes, cookies, that kind of stuff.

 I married way too young the first time, and the poverty was crushing. Xmas was around the corner, and we were totally broke, My ex made a passable bread, that he shaped into teddy bear loaves that we gave for presents. After helping him, I began to be interested in bread. It was cheap to make, and in those days, the only kind of bread you could be in the store was Wonderbread. Bleh.

 So off to the library, and to dig through the huge stash of cookbooks and recipes my mother gave me when I got married. In an ancient cookbook, the kind you sent off a SASE to a food company for, I found an easy bread recipe. The booklet was the Fluffo Cookbook, the many ways to use the man made grease that was Fluffo. The first batch was ok, kinda dry. I persevered, and soon was turning out mediocre but edible loaves of plain white bread on a weekly basis. As I got better, I began to experiment with other kinds, and eventually began tackling more difficult recipes like brioche and French bread.

 After moving to Austin, breadmaking really took off. I was able, thanks to Whole Paycheck, I mean Whole Foods (Which in those days was in an old house down on Lamar and 9th Street, I think.) to get all kinds of different flours in the bulk section. College opened up even more ideas, since anthro/ancient history were my majors, I because interested in the culture of food. And bread of some sort is in almost every single culture in the world. Bread is the staff of life, after all.

 Now I make pretty much every kind of bread. My favorite is heavy dense peasant bread, full of whole grains, nuts, seeds, whatever bits of flours are left over in the bags. It never comes out the same way twice, and the customers don't seem to mind. Sometimes I have a hankering for a grilled cheese sandwich with tomatoes, so I will opt to make some plain white bread, and sweet yeast rolls are a must for any holiday dinner. (Think Grandy's rolls, took me years to find a similar recipe.) While I understand that some people go gluten/grain free, I come from old European peasant stock, my people are adapted to eat grains, and bread is high on the list. And being fresh made, with only King Arthur flour, we can be sure that there are no nasty additives. Good stuff!