B is for Baking Bread

Photograph by Amber Doty

Ah, the smell of fresh-baked bread.  Is there any other smell so representative of a well-kept home, a cared-for family?  For me, the baking of bread is a transformative, magical process - one I hardly understand but am constantly amazed by.

I grew up in a busy family, where no one had time to make fancy dinners or wait for bread to rise.  Dinner usually came from the microwave, traditionally frozen peas or corn paired with chicken nuggets.  Every once in a while we got corned beef and cabbage from the crockpot, and it was always a treat!  Bread came in a little bag from the overstock store, usually a day or two from expiring, always in the exact same shape.

I grew up around farm people and talk, but was raised in the town, where there were no cows or sheep or connection to the things I ate.  I walked the corn rows de-tasseling for a few summers in my youth, amazed at the huge fields that stretched on for what seemed like forever, but we never took the corn home to eat - this was feed corn, meant for the cattle I never spent much time with.  I grew up completely unaware of how to cook anything, and totally oblivious to the magic that so much of our food undergoes before it becomes the food we recognize.

So this was the person my husband moved in with a few days before our first daughter was to be born - my husband whose mother makes her own yoghurt, cooks her own roti, who I once watched slaughter and cook a rabbit in her garage.  Needless to say, he was disappointed, and I was terribly confused.  In the wake of this stunning clash of worlds, he and I both worked a lot on our cooking skills, and we've come a long way since.  But where I came from and what I grew up with makes me intensely appreciative of the magic that happens in the kitchen.

Simple bread made from five ingredients, changes from a fluffy powder (which ultimately comes from the wheat plant) into a malleable dough, into a wonderful loaf that's often twice the size of the dough itself.  Using yeast, a living organism, to transform this simple-yet-so-complex food from its origins into something completely unrecognizable is truly a magical act.  As a mother of three, I've also made some concessions to busyness - these days, most of my bread comes from the bread machine.  But it is still homemade, far healthier than bread bought at the store, and my children are growing up with the kitchen magic that my ancestors discovered ages ago.

My current favorite recipe comes from my Cuisinart bread machine's instruction booklet, modified somewhat by what I've found to work best for me.  It isn't really an everyday bread for us, but coupled with some pasta or marinara sauce, it's wonderful.

Rosemary Bread for a Bread Machine

1 1/2 lb Loaf

Place wet ingredients in bread pan first, followed by dry ingredients.

1 cup water

3 tbs olive oil

2 1/2 cups bread flour

1 1/2 tsp white sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp dried rosemary

1/4 tsp Italian seasoning

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

Resource for Children's Rituals

While stumbling about the internet today, I came across a wonderful resource for children's ritual that I had to stop by and share!

The website of Charter Oak Grove ADF has an entire section devoted to rituals for each of the High Days designed specifically for children.  While the rituals are written according to ADF's Core Order of Ritual, there's also a nice amount of resources for Pagan children of any path that honors Celtic deities.  Their book about the Kindreds (ancestors, nature spirits, and gods and goddesses) is available in print from Lulu.

I hope this is helpful to some parents and groups out there who might be having trouble coming up with ritual ideas for children!

High Holy Day Essay: Lughnasadh

I began my year of High Day celebrations on Lughnasadh, celebrating with a group called Pagans of Nebraska.  The ritual was typically Wiccan, beginning with a sage smudge to purify those entering the circle.  Once everyone had entered and formed the circle, four people standing at the quarters called the four elements: Air, Fire, Water and Earth.  Then a man and a woman standing in the center of the circle called on the God and Goddess respectively, and thanked Them for the gifts of the harvest.  After the leaders had finished, they went around the circle distributing water and cinnamon bread to the participants.  Then the God and Goddess were thanked again and bid farewell, and the elements were similarly thanked.  The circle was closed and the participants free to socialize.
This was my first foray into public ritual, and honestly I didn't much enjoy it.  There seemed to be very little energy; possibly due to the poor reading of many of the invocations, or the seemingly disinterested and cellphone-glancing participants.  The ritual leader at one point had to stop and turn off his cell when it rang in the midst of the ritual.  The setting also left much to be desired; a little green patch of grass between two parking lots, a rather busy road, and a brick building.  All in all, I was rather disappointed in the experience.