D'oh!

Bread dough is a beautiful thing. I love it from start to finish. Just a few ingredients, found in some form all over the world: flour, water, salt - and voila. Add eggs. Add cream. Add butter. Add yeast or baking powder. Add sugar or cardamom or ginger or poppy seeds. Bake it, fry it, boil it.

I have been making bread for many, many years. I am still trying for the perfect white bread, the perfect whole wheat bread [I'm pretty close on this one], and now quinoa bread.

One of my most favorite childhood memories is also one of my first food memories. In Mrs. Bloom's 1st grade class [it was 1980], she gave us the most extraordinary project for the day. Throughout the day we passed around an old-fashioned, glass jar butter-churner and turned a metal crank that slowly turned cream & salt into butter. Someone's mommy was there mixing up a bowl of bread dough that poofed up magically before it was gently transported to the giant oven in the school cafeteria. That afternoon we walked single file down the hall to see the bread come out of the oven.  It was perfectly browned, delicately shaped and looked just like the illustrations of bread in my storybooks. Back in our classroom seats, we were each given a slice of fresh, warm bread, a little scoop of our well-earned butter, and a spoonfull of Mrs. Bloom's homemade strawberry jam - surprise! I can still taste it. I dream of it. I am so thankful for Mrs. Bloom.