Day 71 -- memories of bread

This week the Introductory Foods lab tackled yeast breads. Most students had no experience making bread, so it was exciting for them. Now this isn't a cooking class -- it deals with learning the chemistry of food systems -- the proteins, starches, sugar, yeast, fat and how they interact to form a loaf of bread. What happens if there is no salt in yeast bread? What if we triple the sugar? What differences occur if we use all purpose, bread, whole wheat, rye, or cake flour? All is revealed as they try different versions of the same recipe. Some are great and some just don't work. Then we examine what is happening on a molecular level to determine what worked or didn't work. I loved this as an undergrad and teaching the course this term has brought back memories of that time and when I worked as lab instructor to intro and advanced foods labs as a Masters student in Manitoba.

The whole building smelled wonderful this week. The scent of bread baking is so filled with the warmth of home. It reminded me of my grandmother, who made bread each week from when I was a preschooler  to when I was in high school.  As little ones, my cousin and I would be at Grandma's and we loved bread baking day. We would arrive after she had done most of the work, just in time for the hot loaves to be cooling on racks on the kitchen counter. We knew we would get a slice of fresh warm bread with butter melted into that amazing soft centre. However, we couldn't always wait. Now we were likely 3-4 years old and could just reach high enough to touch the end of the cooling loaves. We discovered that we could pick at the golden crust and get crumbs to chew and then the rapture of getting to the fluffy white centre, where we could get larger bits out to eat. My grandmother was very patient with us that day and said that there must be mice in the house that made those little holes in all her lovely bread. I'm sure my cousin and I just giggled, thinking we'd fooled her. When in high school I would often go to Grandma's for lunch. I carried my lunch from home, but she would always have warm rolls waiting for me. She showed me the trick to oven warming rolls in a paper bag sprinkled with water. This made them close to the warm, fresh-from-the-oven texture we so loved. 

In memory of this early appreciation of bread, today's selection is one that was played many times when I worked at Eaton's one summer after high school -- in the record section along with china, housewares, sporting goods and plants. We had about 3 or 4 LPs that were played over and over each day. This song is from side one of one of those LPs --The Best of Bread. 

If -- Bread