Making Bread and Lessons Learned

*When I started writing this blog post, I thought I was going to share an article about lessons learned making bread. I did do that, but I also took a trip down Memory Lane. My dad worked at a bakery. I worked at the same bakery for 10 years and met and married my husband at that same bakery before I "retired" to raise my children. It has been fun to take that walk back to where it all began. *

If you garden, do you also make your own bread? I did not eat Wonder bread growing up. My dad worked for the "other" bread company in town...Rainbo Baking company...and so did I after high school, while attending college. I also met my husband there. He worked at Rainbo until we got married and then, due to company policy about married people working together, he went across the street and got a job at Borden selling milk. I really did marry "the milkman".

 

I remember daddy bringing home balls of uncooked dough for me to play with. I thought that was neat! I used to tour the factory and watch in amazement as big vats of dough were kneaded, divided and placed in pans before being conveyed into a huge, hot oven to bake. I still remember the smell of freshly baked bread and walking around with my daddy.

I never saw or tasted a slice of home-made whole wheat bread until I was an adult. This is not to cast aspersions on my mom. She was an amazing cook, but with a husband whose "bread and butter" was bread, I doubt she thought of making her own.

I read an article today that made me think about the process of making your own bread. I CAN make my own bread, but I have to be in the mood. I grind my own wheat...well, my electric grinder does. I use a Kitchen Aid mixer to do most of the kneading. I usually use a 50/50 mix of unbleached white flour and white whole wheat. I also use coconut oil instead of other oils.

I still prefer the convenience of buying bread at the store. It is not the "white stuff" anymore. I buy whole wheat...but who am I kidding...it still has a long list of ingredients that I should not be eating. This article reminds me that I need to get back to kneading...

I liked this article about making your own bread. It can also be compared to growing your own food in a garden. You learn life lessons along the way as you try (and fail) to do it yourself. And while the writer of the article says that "nobody ever learned from a plastic bag of ...bread", I have to say that I learned valuable life lessons from what that bag represented.

"And I learned something about me. Or rather I continued to learn a lifelong lesson—that I can "fail" and not be embarrassed or disgraced. I was reminded once again (and it's a reminder I sorely need) that failure can be a superb foundation for creativity and success. Nobody ever learned that from a plastic bag of Wonder Bread.
Being involved with food creation is being involved in all of life. It's owning not only your own food choices, but taking back a big, important part of life from the institutional forces that dominate modern food production."
Home-made Bread...A Metaphor of Life