I admire people who make bread. Many make bread on a sunny day, when nature warms the dough, encouraging the yeast to expand. I know you can coax dough to rise in a warm oven and I have had to on occasion. But the interplay of a warm day, a well kneaded dough and a cozy kitchen says "life is good."
My youngest makes dough. He's the cook in the family, however, he hasn't made bread yet, although he has made pizza dough. I don't call pizza dough, bread, because the dough needs just one rise not two. Still it's a start.
My daughter makes Eggs Benedict, which we call Eggs Katherine. She uses a microwave for the hollandaise sauce, tsk, tsk and leaves behind a bowl of egg whites. I promised my youngest, that I will make French bread with him, the secret ingredient being egg white. It hasn't happened yet. I need to buy better flour and set aside a good deal of time.
I love the fact that you can add ingredients to dough to change it at any time - olives, dried tomatoes, herbs or sugar, raisins, dried peel for sweeter loaves. I would make fruit cake soaked in rum, as my paternal grandmother did, but no one in our house eats raisins, sultanas, currents, etc., except me.
Grain is everywhere. If we don't eat it, we admire it. The grain of a particular wood, for example, enriches our homes. Tables, chairs, cabinets all gleam with the elegance of woodgrain. We smooth it, polish it, enjoy it.
Grains of sand measure the passage of time. Life slips through our fingers like grains of sand, mountains erode, beaches disappear and generations return to sand. Rather heavy duty for something as tiny as a grain of sand. I think I'll just make bread while the sun shines and eat pizza, when my son shines.
The pictures? Hot crossed buns. Turn them to form an "X" and you have the gifts the early celts gave to Easter, their goddess of Spring. Pizza, chez Tomany and Nicholas, the cook.
Have an enriched day!!
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