Keeping the love of baking alive

After 30 years of making sourdough bread, I still look forward to baking. I can't help but wonder why the act of making Real Bread nourishes me so deeply in body, soul, and spirit. Perhaps it is connected with the impulse for why I started to bake in the first place. 

Bread for art

I initially taught myself how to bake because I wanted to make life-sized human form out of bread; a hand-sculpted BREADMAN. Without any previous experience and no recipe to follow, I bought 100lbs of flour, plus yeast and salt, then baked for an entire weekend straight. I formed dozens and dozens of differently shaped loaves to represent part of the human body and elements of clothing. I then assembled these loaves using bamboo skewers to form a three-dimensional man relaxing on a park bench, taking in the scene. While it took a weekend of hard work, it proved to be a whole lot of fun to do. 

This BREADMAN drew a lot of attention as he sat observing the park from his bench. People came and sat with him, took off his bread hat and tried it on for themselves. Some even took bites out of him. Animals were similarly intrigued. I witnessed a squirrel trying to take his hat but, finding it unwieldy, settling for a smaller morsel. Gradually the animals and the weather eroded the sculpture. Mold grew. BREADMAN and his once firm loaves turned into an ever-shrinking remnant of his original form. It was intriguing to witness its decay day by day, crumb by crumb. After a full month it disappeared entirely without leaving a trace… as a good loaf always does. 

All that remained were fond memories and a desire for more, so I made other BREADMEN and BREADWOMEN in parks and museums across the United States. It became even more fun when I invited other artists to help with the baking, as well as musicians and dancers to interact with the sculptures. These events became a big artistic collaboration. Soon I realised that, while basic bread was fine for building these sculptures, the other artists needed good nourishment to inspire their work as well. So, I set out to bake delicious and nutritious bread to keep us all going, to leaven our spirits. With this impulse both bread artforms rose joyfully in parallel, each one supporting the other. Since then I have never stopped baking and playing with bread.

Bread for community

This led rather organically to baking in and for communities. Wherever I travelled, people wanted Real Bread and there were often groups of people who wanted to participate in the making. Far from being an expert baker, I was a baker of goodwill, kneading joy into each loaf, working with others and learning as we went. It soon became apparent that people could taste the joy we kneaded into the loaves. This made the loaves even more delicious, and people often hungered for more. So, I baked and baked with groups of teenagers, school children and adults who hungered for real work and for real food. Singing often accompanied the dancing dough. Stories were shared as the loaves rose. Blessings were offered as we sampled the fruits of our labour. Together we became companions of the loaf, living and breathing the delicious joy of creation, the joy of making Real Bread.

Bread for education

Making Real Bread and building earthen bread ovens became a highlight in my teaching of both children and adults alike. I incorporated bread baking wherever I taught in Waldorf schools, with home-schoolers, when I visited communities ,and when I offered workshops for adults. Joy was always amongst the key ingredients. Everyone seemed to be able to sense it in one way or another. Over time I built more than 30 earthen bread ovens on three continents and baked and baked and baked.

Bread for family

My work caught the attention of Martin Large from Hawthorn Press. He invited me to write a book, which we published as Baking Bread with Children in 2008. This was in print for 15 years, offering guidance and inspiration to parents and teachers around the world. It has now been fully updated and reprinted with the new title, Baking Real Bread.

Eventually I settled down and have been blessed with my own family, for whom I bake every week. My youngest daughter and I were joking the other day about how old she has become - 15 years, the oldest she has ever been. I invited her to think about her age in other ways. We pondered how many loaves old she might be. We reasoned that for every week of her life, I have baked on average four loaves including pizzas, focaccia and other treats. A simple calculation revealed: 4 loaves x 52 weeks x 15 years = 3120 loaves.

My daughter is over 3,000 loaves old! Which child does not yearn to feel older, with more freedom than they have at present? As for how many loaf years I have, well I’m an old crust – and a happy one too.

I am ever grateful for my life with making Real Bread. It has kneaded me well and helped keep my spirit well leavened.

 

Baking Real Bread, Family recipes with stories and songs for celebrating bread, (ISBN 978-1-912480-88-3) is available now from Hawthorn Press, RRP £19.99 

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 Originally published in True Loaf magazine issue 60, October 2024.

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