Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World

Baking Bread With My Daughter

m 81 Baking Bread With My Daughter In the cabin, my daughter kneaded bread. The dough was thick, unwieldy, and it took all her strength to turn it. When I looked at her, I hardly recognized this woman-child, her face all planes and no softness. She reached across her body to rub her shoulder, leaving flour on her shirt. This pain has no logic. It makes no sense. There is nothing to be learned from illness in a person so young. The only fact is pain, and the wooden slab of a daughter’s face. “I don’t think of it that way,” she said. “You can’t know in advance if something’s good or bad.” She turned the bread under her hands and pushed against it with her fists. Fists on dough. A rough, heavy dough: sesame seeds, wheat berries, rye seeds. It will make a good thick nutritious bread. “I’ve seen people who can’t tell the difference between what hurts them and what helps them,” she said, “and I don’t want to be like that.” She turned the bread over on itself, and folded over the folding. The expanding dough resisted the turning, pulled away from her fists. The dough had ideas. She pushed it against the side of the bowl. As she kneaded, her face began to relax. “There is pain that hurts and pain that heals,” she said, and I knew she was right. Move even if it hurts, the doctor had told her. This is the way you get well. Healing takes time. Let it hurt, but gently. 82 m Holdfast Flour and yeast and water. She set the starter on the top shelf of the woodstove and put another log in the firebox. After a time, she added sugar and oil, and more flour, and then all the seeds in the bag. The more she pushed on the dough, folded it over, pressed it with the heels of her hands, the more it rebounded. It’s hard for a mother, you know, to see a child bear up. I cried in the kitchen, and then I was ashamed. “What’s wrong?” she asked, but the pain in me was the pain in her and she divided the dough into two pieces and shaped it into two loaves. “What I need from you,” she said, “is for you to sprinkle cornmeal on the baking pan.” So I did. She took a round loaf in two hands and laid it gently on the pan. Then the other. The loaves are on the shelf under a tea towel. She can’t put them in the oven yet, because we’ve got the stove too hot. It would harden the loaves before they finish rising. So gently now. Not too much heat. I am trying to learn this. Believe me, I am trying. There will be time for more logs in the firebox. There will be time for an oven heated to 400 degrees. We come away and let it rest. Sometimes patience is as good as hope. m Two egg whites, beaten. Brush them on the risen loaves. Out the kitchen window, there is wind in the birches. Little curls of bark tear away from the trunks and scatter across the patchy snow. The new bark underneath is pure white. Poppy seeds sprinkled on round loaves. Round loaves in the oven, hardening around the edges, still rising in the center.The crust cracks, and steam puffs out the fissures. Only a few days ago, the birches were noisy with yellow leaves, shuffling in the wind. When we heard leaves blowing across the road, we thought a car was coming; they were that loud. But now the leaves have twisted off the trees and blown onto the lake. Baking Bread With My Daughter m 83 There are fishermen on the bay in their silver boats, leaning over their poles, their hands clasped between their knees; and bear hunters past the portages. We saw them pass today, canoes heavy with gear. The radio says a cold Arctic air mass is headed into northern Minnesota. There is no color in the sun. Soon we will wake up to a new calm. The lake will be white and shining, with birch leaves frozen in the surface. In heavy coats, my daughter and I will walk on the lake. What will we have learned about...