Baking with my mothers before me

There's something about bread dough that is breathtakingly beautiful. More than any other kind of cooking, I feel, it is truly an art and most definitely a joy. When I'm growing a sponge, the yeast bubbling away at the loose batter fills the whole house with such a wonderful aroma that it's almost difficult for me to focus on anything else, and when I touch the risen dough ever so gently after it's come to dizzingly precarious heights over the sides of my rising bowl (I am sadly without a large enough bowl for more than about one loaf at a time), I get shivers. It is so amazing to me how the natural metabolism of the yeast cells works so perfectly with the gluten in the wheat to create a delicate network of protein strands stretched and elevated into place by carbon dioxide, and then how the heat of the oven captures that elaborate structure by hardening the wheat and killing the yeast, simultaneously preventing the bread from unlimited growth and from collapse.

Today, taking advantage of the flexible timeline of bread-making, I am baking an old family recipe for oatmeal bread; it is a rich, deep, sweet and chewy bread, moist with oats and flavored with the slightest hint of molasses. I let the yeast feast away on a warm mix of oats, water, molasses, sugar, and salt for several hours while Paul and I had lunch with his family, and when I returned the earthy smell of happy yeast accosted me full force. It was such a delight! When I finally was able to add the flour, that smell had changed slightly to an almost alcoholic odor (if you leave yeast long enough, you start to get some fermentation; some people say this makes for more tasty and nutritious bread. I however ended up with this fermentation accidentally due to an afternoon nap...), which is new to me in my personal experience of bread-making, but as the dough has risen beautifully (domed to perfection under its protective towel), I think it should be quite fine. This recipe is one of my favorites partly because it is so old that it calls for "a lump of butter the size of an egg" and doesn't specify how much flour to add or what temperature to bake the bread at (or for how long... the directions are rather sparse even given the notes I've added to them), which gives me a feeling of freedom with the baking. Honestly I never pay attention to how much flour the recipe says to add anyway, because it varies so much depending on the humidity in the air, and most recipes originate in more humid places than here in Arizona!

So today I am thankful for time at home to bake bread. I am thankful for the incredible design of yeast and wheat that allows them to work so well together, and for whatever people first discovered those properties! I am thankful for a great-grandmother that passed down her recipes, and with them a tradition of nourishing love (as far as I know, every one of the women in my mother's line, mother to daughter over the generations, has loved to cook and to show their love with food). All these beautiful things that I take for granted so often, today I remember and am thankful for them.