Sun 28 Mar 2010
Passing on food.
Posted by Amanda under Bread, Food, General
[4] Comments
The day began with choosing what bread to bake. Cheese and Onion. This bread has convinced me that anything could be turned into bread. You basically make a cheese sauce with onion, thyme and marjoram, and then you add yeast and flour to it and voila! Bread! I do not use a bread machine. I’ve never learned how. I don’t own one. I want to be able to have fresh bread even when the power goes out. So kneading the bread by hand, getting the feel for the elasticity, this is a step towards self-sufficiency for me. The rhythm of kneading bread, the smell of the yeast bubbling, the texture and the consistency under my hands. This is what I enjoy about making bread. It always amazes me how I can leave a bowl of dough on the counter, forget about it for an hour, come back and it is pushing it’s way right out of the bowl! It’s like magic everytime. I exclaim, I praise the powers of yeast, I admire the balloon. Then I punch it down. The fwiff of the air escaping is one of my favourite sounds.
Making bread this way has been passed down to me from my mother. The smell of yeast bubbling in the little cup, adding a pinch of sugar to give the little yeast bugs something to munch on, the texture and taste of good bread dough. This has all been given to me over a very ripe childhood. This has not been given to most people. Many people do not even know what ingredients go into bread. I recently watched a TED Talk by Jamie Oliver about Obesity. He declares a convincing argument that much of food education can start in the homes. It starts by parents passing down to their children ways to cook food, ways to nurish themselves. I have been so fortunate that this has been true of my life.
What recipes do you have that were given to you by a different generation? Any that you would like to share?
I am blessed enough to actually be in possession of my mother’s recipe box. It is stuffed full with so many recipes, hers and now mine, that it doesn’t even close anymore. To me, this is truly an inheritance.
Do you ever take stock of how much you make from scratch? It’s amazing the nutritional value you will add to your food, if you make more of it from scratch. I’ll try to keep a talley this week of how much we make from scratch and what processed foods we still consider staple.









ver.