Baking With Mom

Like many of us, I grew up with freshly baked breads. My mother and grandmother baked bread.  White bread, whole wheat bread, multigrain organic bread, white dinner rolls.  All kinds.  I remember the smell of warm bread and of course fresh butter on freshly baked bread (since I grew up in Wisconsin, fresh butter was essential).  At some point in time, it seemed that people quit baking bread at home and relied on store bought bread. Then came the bread machine, which can make a great loaf of bread with little effort.  But for me, real hand-made and oven-baked bread just couldn’t be beat.

Luckily I married into a family of bread lovers.  When I quit practicing law full time, baking bread became a hobby, one several family members find very fulfilling….or maybe just filling.  It has become a tradition in our family to always have homemade bread for major family dinners, as well as dinners where just my husband and I are home. I have also been known to bake bread that didn’t properly rise just for the smell of homemade bread at dinner time. Bread is very serious in our home.

I don’t know if there has been a rebirth in artisan bread baking, or if Americans just have more access through the internet and bookstores for resources, products and recipes for breads.  For me, it was just a matter of time, in addition to getting over the “difficulty” of baking bread. Frankly, it’s not that hard to make a basic bread recipe. Flour, water, yeast and salt, and a mixer with a dough hook, and you can have a ciabatta or other white loaf in no time. I even attended a class in which the instructor opined that two risings are really unnecessary. For true bread experts, this may be sacrilege, but in my opinion, if you like it, it works.

And the good news is…. all this interest in bread baking has sparked a number of resources available to potential bread bakers. I found a great blog website, www.thefreshloaf.com, which allows bakers to send in questions and to provide answers to other users. For great bread baking resources, including a wonderful sourdough starter, check out www.kingarthurflour.com. As for books, I received The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum for a Christmas gift one year from my husband’s daughters, which is a great resource and has fabulous and easy recipes – as well as some more difficult recipes for the true artisans.  And if you want to understand the chemistry behind baking bread (and anything else related to cooking or baking) check out Shirley Corriher’s books, Cookwise: the Secrets of Cooking Revealed and Bakewise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with over 200 Magnificent Recipes. There are great tips on starters and breads in addition to wonderful recipes.

Happy Baking!