Bread and Hands

I find myself starved for ritual this time of year. Perhaps it is the absence of them after an abundance of them in November and December. Whatever the reason, I've taken to making my own rituals of late. The most recent is baking bread. My forearms are growing stronger, my hands thicker with each knead and twist, knead and twist, and somehow my soul is satisfied for its need of something spiritual.

This morning I started at 7. I couldn't sleep. Another one of those dreams where my teeth fall out only this time it wasn't a tooth. It was a gold cap and the sight of its glimmer woke me up from a deep, deep sleep. I tossed and turned for a bit, then decided to just head downstairs, check out the headlines, and start the bread. Ann came down an hour later awakened by the sounds and smells of coffee.

Making bread takes five hours. There's the oatmeal soak first, followed by the blending of the yeast, salt, oil, and honey. Then the flour. Six cups. Each successive cup makes it more and more difficult to stir the ingredients. Eventually, inevitably the dough is pulled from the bowl and set on a soft bed of flour and I begin to knead.

The kneading takes about 45 minutes. About halfway through, I start sweating. I can feel the sweat roll down my back, between my breasts, and across my forehead. The ache in my arms and shoulders begins about the same time, but generally a cup of flour is left to mix in. It's the last cup that torments me.

Once I forgot the last cup, but didn't realize it until I sliced open a loaf and found gaping holes in my bread. Well, I thought, I don't need to be so precise...a cup short still makes a loaf, holey though it may be, it still makes a loaf.

The recipe I have calls for two cups of whole wheat flour and four cups of white. I played with the ratios for a few weeks, eventually settling on three cups of each. That's what I made this morning. Half and half bread I call it.

I'm not sure which part of the ritual I like the most -- the hot water poured over the two cups of oatmeal, the foaming of the yeast, the way the honey slips from the measuring cup after I've already measured out the vegetable oil. I don't enjoy the stirring. There's a point when it takes all I have to turn the spoon through the dough followed by the resignation that I must begin to knead. I do enjoy the kneading, all but the last ten minutes of it. It's satisfying to feel the dough change under my hands, the sticky giving way to the elastic, the colors deepening as the ingredients blend together. I love watching it rise as well, but perhaps my favorite part is when, once risen, the dough must be punched again, beaten down so the air bubbles are reduced and the dough, set in the pans, can rise again.

I love the smell of the bread baking, too, and the taste of the first slice when it's still steaming. But I think what I love the most is that this ritual, like any other, isn't about the parts. It's about the whole. Any step along the process is as important, if not as enjoyable, as the one that preceeds it or that one that follows it. When my shoulders ache and my forearms swell, when the sweat rolls off of me onto the countertop, even when the last few turns of the spoon are touches of agony I know they will be followed by equally important touches of magic.

I am not an expert breadmaker by any stretch of the imagination. I have one recipe I use and am afraid to experiment with any other than the simple ingredients of flour, oil, water, oats, honey, salt, and yeast. Ann keeps asking for cinnamon raisin bread or something with nuts, but I worry that would be like adding an extra prayer during Yom Kippur or an extra candle during communion. I'm not a religious woman, but I think I could become one were my god yeast, my saints honey, my altar flour. I think I could become fanatical about the temperature for rising, the ratio of white to wheat, the choice of glass pans versus teflon. For now, though, my spirit is moved by the five hours each Sunday when from these hands I can make something greater than myself.