I joke about wearing Wonderbread bags over my socks inside my Moonboots when I was a kid. Most often they were actually Roman Meal plastic bread bags, because that’s the kind of bread my Grandma bought and she saved those bags.
Hey, we didn’t have Gortex back then or modern lightweight insulative materials. We had cotton socks, cotton long underwear and foam lined Moonboots. Bread bags were a necessary layer and they were basically free. They gave you another hour outside before the air turned your thighs into beet red lobster claw stumps after the snow soaked through your jeans and your waffle weave long johns and you had to go in anyway. No self-respecting kid after first or second grade wore snowpants. Duh.
I always wondered a little bit about why my Grandma and my Mom did things differently as far as their kitchens and meals went. I think now, back then I didn’t really understand that my Grandma was running her house on her small Social Security check for much of my young life. Being a kid and having a snack drawer stocked with some taffy, Jolly Ranchers, Life Savers, and Butterfingers with a few flavors of Fanta in the fridge, I obviously didn’t realize that she spent a good deal of that check on me and my sister.
Therefore, I don’t remember Grandma making bread, but Mom always did. Her specialties were huge dinner buns and cinnamon rolls as big as your head and tea rings and any number of other bread related loaves and cakes.
Grandma bought bread from the store. When she did make bread it was more of an apple cake or applesauce cake. Grandma made cinnamon rolls with Pillsbury biscuit dough.
We’d tear part of the label off and I’d bang that blue roll of preformed dough on the rounded metal edge of her countertop or the chipped porcelain edge of her Hoosier cabinet counter until it exploded open with a POP.
We’d take the individual biscuits and half them and roll cinnamon and sugar inside and pinch them tight (it would melt out and puddle anyway so crunchy and good.) And we’d make a little icing with powdered sugar and milk (not too much). Grandma would throw a pinch of salt in. We’d make these a lot for after Sunday dinner (what she called lunch - nighttime meal was supper). Grandma’s molasses cookies were reserved for after school treats when I’d get off the bus and stop in to see her and watch some Looney Tunes.
Anyways, Mom has always made great bread. Light, fluffy, buttery, heavenly. Good for gravy, good for butter and jelly, great as peanut butter toast or with cream cheese and those buns are pretty fantastic as Thanksgiving leftover sandwich holders. I think I may have been the only kid at school to have slices of homemade bread on my cotto salami or bologna sandwiches. It didn’t fare too well in my brown paper sack after the bus ride and the locker stash, but it tasted great, tasted like home.
Now, my daughter, Lucy has perfected the bread game. She makes a lot of sourdough, but also makes many other wonderful loaves. Her buns from this past Thanksgiving are in the picture here. The tops are the perfect color golden brown, with just a sprinkle of hard salt. They’re still soft, just like the bottoms and the middle might as well be clouds.
Lucy also makes a mean pretzel dough. Cheddar Jalapeno bread… woah. Did I mention the recipe that Mom and Lucy use makes fantastic slider buns for smash burgers hot off the grill?
Bread making is an art. Following any recipe is. You can’t just follow directions implicitly, you have to have experienced the process more than just a few times. You have to know your oven. You have to trust your nose, you need to know how far your finger tips can impress the crust and when the loaf is really ready without burning or toasting your crust. You have to understand what happens when it comes out and sits on the cooling rack.
Of course sourdough adds a whole other dimension of complication. In order to bake successfully, you have to bake, you have to mistake. So it is with any art. So it is with writing. So it is with life.
I got made fun of a lot when I was a kid. Probably cause my jeans were from Farm-n-Fleet (yes that’s what they’re called in Illinois). Lee jeans not Levi’s button flies and not Calvins or Guess. Probably cause said jeans always seemed to turn into “floods” because I grew very fast in spurts, usually right after I got some new jeans.
For these reasons and others, I wasn’t as coordinated as the rest of my peers and because I grew up in the country and preferred to spend my time wandering and wondering in the woods and between the pages of my favorite books, I didn’t have time to perfect my ball dribbling or shooting or throwing or catching. I didn’t really like those things anyway as much as I liked just being myself. I was different. However, even if you’re okay being different, it is hard to be left out, to feel outcast.
I liked my Moonboots, though, they were something that everyone had, my short jeans fit down inside them and you couldn’t tell that I was different in that respect. I also liked warm feet and when my Wonderbread or Roman Meal bread bags wore out, I’d get a couple more from Grandma.
You know, it didn’t seem weird to me, it seemed special. Grandma could have tossed those bags, but she saved them for me. If she ran out, we’d hurry up and eat a loaf or she’d give me the bag and fold the brown slices up into some recycled tin foil that she’d also saved. Then she’d go to Super Value or Pineway and get a couple more loaves. I would go out and play in the snow with my friends or by myself.
When I think of bread now, I’m reminded of Christ talking about the Bread of Life. I think that this bread that He speaks of also comes packaged in a very special container. I’m reminded just how much of my own life has been touched by bread. Either homemade or from a plastic bag. Bread bags… one of the greatest things since, well, ya, since sliced bread.
