I was about 11 and bored out of my mind in Greensburg, Kansas, the day my grandma, Frances Loucks Peterson, taught me how to make bread.

My parents would have been moving from someplace on one coast to someplace on the other coast during my father’s Navy career. The moves were frequent, every couple of years, and always resulted in me and my younger brother and sister getting shipped to Kansas in the blast-furnace heat of July.

So when Grandma announced we were going to make bread, I was relieved. It beat doing chores on the ranch, such as painting the exterior of the hired hands’ house when it was 105 degrees outside, or stacking hay bales while being attacked by grasshoppers, or making fried chicken for 20 in a steamy kitchen.

Of course, relief is not joy. But that morning, as I watched the yeast get foamy in Grandma’s giant stoneware bowl ― the same one I use today ―joy showed up, and it still shows up every time I grab that bowl and unleash the aromatic alchemy that happens when yeast spores hook up with wheat.

Baking bread, at least the way I do it, is at once invigorating and soothing. You can take out aggression on dough, hurl it at the counter from a foot high and punch it with your fists if you want. You can’t hurt it. Or you can find a gentle reverie in the dough, squeeze its cool pillowy sides with your finger and rock the heels of your hands lazily back and forth in the center. The main thing is to find a rhythm and just keep going.

Grandma liked to tell how proud Grandpa was of her bread. It was lighter and had a finer crumb than the bread his friends’ wives made.

“You just have to knead that dough,” she would say. And boy, did she ever. Her big soft hands seemed to never tire as she lifted, turned and folded the heavy dough with her stout fingers, then mashed it with the heels of her hands.

All the while she could be looking out the window over the kitchen sink and commenting on the birds in the rose bed without grunting or having to pause to catch her breath.

When it was my turn I was timid, worried about dough sticking to my fingers. “Rub more flour on your hands and keep going. You’re not tired already, are you?” Grandma asked in her cheerful, high-pitched voice.

My skinny arms were burning but I kept going. I had learned that in western Kansas you never admitted to being tired, even when given an opening to do so. If you just push through, I learned, you end up surprising yourself with what you can accomplish.

Pulling open the oven door and seeing perfectly vaulted golden loaves of bread that smelled like comfort and toast was nothing short of thrilling.

Even today, the combination of mild physical exertion and mental drifting makes me feel better, even when I’m already feeling fine. There is no better aromatherapy than the scent of freshly baked bread. Realtors know this, which is why they often tell home sellers who don’t bake to pour a package of yeast into a cup of warm water before showing the house to prospective buyers. It is a magical scent that taps into primal feelings of security and contentment.

Even though I made my first loaf some 40 years ago, baking bread has not been a constant in my life. It is also not a ritual food stunt that I perform once a year for a special occasion. Nor is it an activity I seek out in response to a stressful day or week.

Rather, baking bread has found me at different stages of my life, each time easing its way back in effortlessly like a longtime friend returning after an extended absence.

The first stage was those summers in Greensburg. Grandma made four loaves of bread once a week, always on the same day. It seems like Friday, but days of the week all seem the same when you’re a school kid on summer break.

I loved the taste of Grandma’s soft whole-wheat bread. It tasted sort of like Roman Meal, which was what we ate at home, but not as squishy. That summer when I first learned how, I made bread once for my parents after leaving Greensburg to join them in our new digs, but it felt forced. It didn’t fit in with my normal life of school, swim team and backyard barbecues. I let it go.

In college I picked it up again for one year with one roommate. We didn’t have a big budget for food, but we had an Asteroids video game and a patio with a grill that attracted lots of friends on weekends who needed to be fed. I quickly discovered that if I could recruit guests to bring soup and I made bread, I came out ahead, financially, time-wise and in terms of people thinking you did something truly amazing, even though I think a good soup is harder to pull off.

You can spend a lot of money on fancy ingredients for bread, but my version of my grandmother’s bread is not fancy. It costs less than $2 per loaf to make, even though I always buy good quality Hudson Cream flour from Hudson, Kan., and I use honey or sorghum, which cost a little more than the sugar Grandma used.

And when it comes to time, baking bread takes a long time but not a lot of time. My bread, which rises twice, takes about three hours start to finish, but during a lot of that time I’m doing other things. I bake four loaves every Saturday morning because I can do other chores such as laundry, gardening or housecleaning at the same time.

That is, unless I decide to read the paper, do puzzles or prowl around on eBay. Either way, baking bread fits into my Saturday morning as easily as a second pot of coffee.

Baking bread went out of my life again the 11 years I lived in France and Germany after college. That’s because over there, baking bread is so respected as a skilled trade that most Europeans would no more bake their own bread than make their own shoes.

When every neighborhood has a trained, experienced baker with a huge hot oven who turns out delicious bread six or seven days a week, buying it is clearly the way to go.

And yet eating dense, yeasty, crusty delicious bread every day set up the inevitable return of bread-baking to my life.

When I came back to the States (as all Americans living overseas refer to their homeland, don’t ask me why), just as I was missing the extraordinary everyday breads of Europe, an old friend in Kansas City had discovered “Beard on Bread.” In that seminal cookbook, James Beard attempted to solve the problem Julia Child identified when she famously asked how a nation can call itself great when its bread tastes like Kleenex.

My friend was turning out beautiful crusty loves of French bread that I found superior to actual baguettes in France, which seem to be 80 percent crust, 10 percent bread and 10 percent air pockets. Some of the loaves he filled with cheese, but I liked the plain ones best. His bread underscored the sadness of grocery store bread. (This was just before Farm to Market began putting good bread in local store shelves.)

My German husband was inspired by our American friend’s French loaves, but he couldn’t abide white flour, so he procured a dry sour starter mix and a rye-blend flour from Germany. Every week he made a couple of giant round loaves that were the texture of a moist sponge on the inside.

For two years we never bought bread. Then our kids got to the Scouting and sports phases that squeeze out all civilized, refined pastimes, including baking bread, and it was back to the bagged stuff.

Bread-baking returned to me several months ago when I bought a little house on a big lot in the Flint Hills. Grandma’s stoneware bread bowl was too big to fit into any of the little cabinets, so I decided to leave it sitting out, first on the counter, then on top of the wall cabinets with other pieces of pottery.

But the bowl looked sadly out of place. Stained and chipped, it was not as pretty as the other display bowls. A decade after it had come into my possession, the bowl was once again at home on the prairie. It needed to be put back in service turning Kansas wheat into wholesome bread.

I have found the rhythm of making bread each week. Every Saturday, while the coffee is steeping in my French press, I pour two little packets of yeast into warm water. The combination of those two smells is euphoria-inducing.

Grandma’s recipe makes four loaves of bread, and I need only two a week, so I often use the other two portions for cinnamon rolls or pizza crusts, both of which can be frozen after the first rise for later use.

I wanted to exchange ideas and information with other bread bakers, so I sent out emails to my many foodie friends asking who else bakes their own bread by hand, not in a bread machine.

I was surprised how hard it was to find anyone.

When I find Kathy Smith of Shawnee in her kitchen after letting myself in the front door, her mane of shoulder-length silver hair obscures the opening of the oven. Smith is checking the interior temperature of a loaf of bread ― a technique I’ve never heard of but later learn is important because her breads are filled, and the filling can alter how long it takes to get the inside of the bread fully cooked.

Smith has been baking since she was 9 years old. Like me, she learned at the side of her grandmother, Dott Wharton.

“She made the best rolls on the planet ― she had these tiny hands that were bent with arthritis, and she would squeeze the dough out between two fingers. But she would not teach anyone else how to do it,” Smith recalls with a bright smile.

In the 1970s, Smith began baking old-fashioned, double-rise whole-wheat bread with a girlfriend. “We were home bodies, and it just seemed like a natural thing to do.”

When life got busier, the bread-making fell away. When Smith came back to it, she was looking for an easy standby food for entertaining at her and her husband’s lake house. She found the recipe she was looking for in Judith Fertig’s “200 Fast & Easy Artisan Breads.”

Fertig’s Master Recipe No. 1 is a no-knead, single-rise recipe that can be baked plain for a hearty country white loaf, or rolled out and filled with any number of ingredients. Smith keeps jars of marinated mozzarella, pesto, roasted red peppers and artichokes on hand for quick and easy fillings. Thinly sliced smoked ham is another favorite.

“Homemade bread is the perfect food for a party. It makes the house smell good, and everyone loves it. If it has some kind of filling, you don’t need anything else,” Smith says.

The yeast is bubbling up in a bowl, and Cassandra Leal of Bonner Springs hesitates as she picks up the box of instant potato flakes. She turns to look at the iPad propped on her counter, where a picture of a stained index card in her grandmother’s cursive handwriting lists the ingredients for her great-grandmother, Neva Boyd’s, Welsh potato bread/.

Leal’s potato bread makes a dense dough that is “therapeutic” to knead, she says. “It’s soothing.”

It also gives Leal a sense of connection to her mother and grandmother, who live in southwest Missouri. “I don’t get to see them that often, and when I miss them I make bread.”

I just finished reading Michael Pollen’s new book, “Cooked,” in which he examines four cooking techniques that utilize the four elements: fire, water, air and earth. The air chapter is devoted to his quest to make sourdough bread from homemade starter. It was an interesting read and it made me realize my bread-baking is not a quest for a perfect texture or extraordinary taste.

I’m in it for the relaxation, so for now, I’ll stick to my version of Grandma’s soft whole-wheat bread. Familiarity with the recipe breeds contentment in the process.

When my arms start to burn ― and they still do ― I have learned the worst thing to do is to slow down. You will never be able to regain that momentum. Instead I try to find some birds to look at out the window. Sometimes I hear Grandma’s voice in my head, “You’re not tired already, are you?”

And I keep going, pounding the dough into submission, until it’s pillowy soft and shiny and I know it will bake up into a light loaf with a fine texture that she would be proud of.



Master Recipe 1: Easy Artisan Dough

This first master recipe introduces you to the basics of the Easy Artisan bread method. As you begin to make bread, all of this will get even easier. You won’t have to check the temperature of the water, as you’ll know what lukewarm feels like. You’ll get quite good at forming the various types of loaves and sliding them onto the hot baking stone. You’ll be able to tell, by how fast the temperature rises on the instant-read thermometer, when your bread reaches 190 degrees (90°C) and is done. Your artisan loaves will have a crisp, darkened crust, a tender, moist crumb and a mellow, toasty flavor ― all with this easy method. The dough will also make delicious rolls, pizza or flatbread.

Makes enough dough for bread, rolls, pizza or flatbread to serve 12 to 16

Equipment:

Instant-read thermometer

16-cup (4 L) mixing bowl

Wooden spoon or Danish dough whisk

Tips:

Combining 1 1/2 cups (375 mL) hot with 11/2 cups (375 mL) cold tap water will result in lukewarm water of approximately 100 degrees. (38°C).

Before storing the dough in the refrigerator, use a permanent marker to write the date on the plastic wrap so you’ll know when you made your dough ― and when to use it up 9 days later.

6 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose or bread flour 1.625 L

1 1/2 tablespoon instant or bread machine yeast 22 mL

1 1/2 tablespoon fine table or kosher salt 22 mL

3 cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees) °F/38°C) 750 mL

1. Measure. Spoon the flour into a measuring cup, level with a knife or your finger, then dump the flour into the mixing bowl.

2. Mix. Add the yeast and salt to the flour. Stir together with a wooden spoon or Danish dough whisk. Pour in the water and stir together until just moistened. Beat 40 strokes, scraping the bottom and the sides of the bowl, until the dough forms a lumpy, sticky mass.

3. Rise. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature (72 degrees) °F/22°C) in a draft-free place for 2 hours or until the dough has risen nearly to the top of the bowl and has a sponge-like appearance.

4. Use right away or refrigerate. Use that day or place the dough, covered with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for up to 9 days before baking.

Neva Boyd’s bread

In a small bowl, combine:

2 packages yeast

2 teaspoons sugar

1/2 cup warm water

In a large bowl, combine:

2 cups very warm water

1/3 cup sugar

3 teaspoons salt

2/3 cup shortening, oil or butter

3 eggs

3/4 cup instant potato buds

When the yeast is done proofing (10 minutes), add the yeast mixture to the potato mixture. Then add, one cup at a time:

71/2 to 8 cups flour

When the dough can’t be stirred anymore, turn it out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic.

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and a tea towel and place in a warm, draft-free spot. Let rise one hour.

Shape into four loaves and put in 8-inch by 5-inch pans. Let rise 30 minutes, covered.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Bake 25 minutes or until the bread sounds hollow when you thump it.

Cindy’s soft whole-wheat bread

In a large mixing bowl, combine:

41/2 cups lukewarm water

1/2 cup honey or sorghum

Add:

2 tablespoons (two packages) yeast

Let rest 10 minutes, then add:

2 tablespoons salt

1/4cup vegetable oil or melted butter

1/2 cup wheat bran or wheat germ

Stir with a wooden spoon, then add 1 cup at a time until you can’t stir any more:

4 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour

4 1/2 cups white flour. Reserve 1/2 cup for the kneading surface.

When the dough becomes too stiff to stir, continue adding the remaining white flour into the bowl and pushing it into the dough with the spoon or your fingers so the dough won’t be sticky when you turn it out.

Sprinkle the reserved flour on the kneading surface and roll it around to coat the outside with flour. Add more flour to the kneading surface as needed to prevent sticking.

Knead by grasping the top half of the dough with both hands and folding the top third down then pushing it back into the dough with the heel of one hand. Lift the dough off the surface, give it a quarter turn, and repeat the kneading motion.

If the dough sticks to the surface when you lift it, remove the stuck bits with a pastry scraper or spatula and sprinkle more flour on the surface.

Knead until the dough becomes shiny and elastic, about 10 minutes. If you don’t knead long enough, the dough will not rise fully. If you over-knead it, it can be too crumbly inside.

Rinse and dry the mixing bowl, then butter the bottom half of it. Shape the dough into a large ball and place it rounded side down into the bowl, then carefully flip it over so the side that is up is buttered.

Wet a clean tea towel with hot water, wring it out and drape it over the bowl. Place the bowl in a warm spot free of drafts. On cold days, you can preheat the oven to the lowest setting, then turn it off and let the dough rise in the oven.

Allow the dough to rise one hour or until doubled in size.

Butter four 8-inch by 5-inch loaf pans.

Punch the dough down with your fists, then divide into four portions. Shape each portion into a loaf and place in a buttered pan. You can also reserve one or more portions to roll out for cinnamon rolls or pizza crusts. The dough will keep up to 2 days in the refrigerator in a sealed glass or plastic container.

Cover the loaf pans with a warm damp tea towel and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in size, 30 to 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Bake the bread 25 minutes until golden brown on top. Let the bread rest in the pans 10 minutes, then turn them out. Let cool 10 more minutes if possible before slicing.

Cassandra Leal slices into a loaf of freshly baked bread in the kitchen of her Bonner Springs home on May 1

By Cindy Hoedel

(The Kansas City Star)

. (MCT)