When I was growing up, my mum made our bread. We were a family of 6 and lunches were always sandwiches so she made, what, about 10 loaves a week. She had big metal bowl for the dough and BakeRite Tinware pans for the loaves. (I have some of the latter still. I use them for banana bread or pound cake.) I loved coming home from school on a bread day to a house smelling of those loaves. They’d be lined up on the counter, cooling, and I don’t think she ever let us have slices as an after-school snack. That would have upset her system, her accounting.
Did I ever tell her how much I appreciated her bread? I don’t think I did. To be honest, I didn’t appreciate it. Not then. Our lunch sandwiches were door-stoppers, the slices uneven, and I remember I wished we could have Wonder Bread like the other kids. Neat packages of cheese or egg salad or tuna. Once I was invited to go with a friend and her parents on their boat for a weekend, maybe this was grade 6, and my mum sent me with a loaf of bread and a jar of homemade jam. I was embarrassed by this gift, or at least I was until my friend’s parents went into raptures about how good the bread was, how good the jam. We sat on some logs on the shore of Tent Island where we were anchored overnight and we, though mostly they, ate the whole loaf. It wasn’t lunch or dinner. They couldn’t eat those slices fast enough. Did I tell my mum? Probably not.
When my children were young, I baked most of our bread. I was home most of the time, when I wasn’t doing the errands related to family life, so bread-making fit into the rhythm of that life. I used different methods. Sometimes I made yeast bread, setting it in the morning, letting it rise, then baking it in the afternoon. I was happy to cut slices for afternoon snacks (though it seems this is not what was remembered of those years). Sometimes I made cinnamon buns too, with the same dough. When I bought Carol Field’s The Italian Baker, I often made a biga, or starter, using yeast, flour, and water, letting it sit, then incorporating it into dough that produced gorgeous rustic loaves. Later, the wonderful Bev Shaw, who owned Talewind Books in Sechelt, and who died far too soon, gave me some of her sourdough starter and I made sourdough bread. I made it for years but then I forgot to freeze it when we went away for 5 weeks one winter and the starter died. I could have asked Bev for more and I know she would have gladly given it but I’d stopped baking bread regularly. My children had all left home and it was somehow just easier to buy bread.
During the pandemic, I began to bake it again. It gave a comforting kind of structure to the long lonely days. And honestly, is there anything more comforting than a slice of warm bread spread with butter? I can’t think of one. I wasn’t making sourdough exactly but something more like the famous Jim Lahey loaves, using a tiny bit of yeast and a long overnight rise, with no kneading. Those loaves were a kind of magic and magic was what we needed.
In January I decided to make sourdough starter again. I thought our kitchen must be teeming with wild yeast and it would be simple and I was right. My starter took 6 or 7 days. I didn’t weigh the flour and water, I didn’t use a thermometer or any of the fancy equipment required in many of the recipes. I used unbleached white flour and some dark rye. Tap water (we have a well and our water is delicious). It did what it was supposed to do and now I have a quart jar of the most beautiful starter. I call her Artemis.
When we went to Oaxaca for a little more than 2 weeks, she survived just fine. I’ve used her for chocolate cake (it was so good), our weekly pizza dough, and a weekly loaf of bread. The photograph at the top of the page is this week’s. I thought, cutting into it for a trial slice, that bread doesn’t have to be any better than this. Sometimes I put pumpkin seeds in. Once I made it with rosemary and walnuts. I use rye flour, unbleached white, whole wheat. Sometimes I put flax seeds in. Some mornings I come downstairs to the most wonderful smell of toasting sourdough and I think, Why haven’t I been doing this all along? Why did I ever buy bread? Well, there were reasons. And now there’s no reason not to bake bread. I wish I’d known when I was a child what I know now, about the work that goes into bread, the love, the intention, and I wish I’d thanked my mother. I wish I told her that I was glad to open my lunchbox and find her sandwiches inside, wrapped in waxed paper, a few homemade cookies wrapped separately, an apple, and I wish I’d hugged her for her reliable and practical love.
...Theresa Kishkan 