Baking memories

The arrival of Thanksgiving gives me an excuse to indulge in my secret passion: baking.

There was a time was when a guy might be reluctant to admit such a thing. But these days, some of the world’s top chefs are male, including guys like Wolfgang “Hockey Smile” Puck.

A recent spate of baking began with a batch of my mom’s sour cream raisin bars. They were so light and luscious that they barely lasted a day. Maybe I’ll share some with my wife the next time I make them.

Buoyed by this easy success, I felt the need for something more challenging. My wife found just such a challenge in a magazine.

“What about making this?” she asked, pointing at a recipe.

“Cardamom bread? I like the way you think. But what’s cardamom? And where would you get it? Don’t worry; I know a guy who probably knows a guy.”

It turns out that you don’t have to know anyone, as cardamom is sold openly at our local supermarket. This is disturbing. What about our youth? We all know how it goes: you use a little cinnamon one morning to boot up and, next thing you know, you’re all strung out on saffron. Where’s the spice squad when you need them?

When I was growing up, all our bread was home-baked. It was fascinating to watch Mom toss a few humble ingredients together — bread can be made with just flour, water, yeast and salt — and, through some sort of magical alchemy, produce delicious bread that only needed a smear of butter.

But at school, we learned that most of our classmates ate Wonder Bread. We thought we should also eat Wonder Bread, so we nagged our parents into buying that stuff and abandoning the chewy goodness of homemade bread.

Things have since come full circle. Nowadays, homemade bread is called “artisanal” and deemed to be a treat.

My favorite part of breadmaking is the kneading. Kneading is therapeutic; you get to punch and squash, then punch and squash some more. “Take that, Tommy Snodgrass,” you might mumble, recalling an upsetting memory from third grade.

Once your kneading need is satiated, you oil the dough and plop it into a bowl. You might notice the dough resembles a humongous soybean. And, like a sprouting soybean, the dough grows at an astonishing rate, doubling its size in a short while.

While dough may not be alive, it certainly contains life — an entire ecosystem, in fact. Enzymes convert starch into sugar, which the yeast eats and turns into carbon dioxide and ethanol.

Bakers often boost their yeast by mixing it with lukewarm sugar water. This causes the yeast to awaken from its desiccated slumber and yell, “Woo-hoo, par-TEE.” A microbial bacchanal ensues, complete with copious amounts of alcohol-laced reproduction, albeit the asexual kind.

After conquering cardamom bread, I felt ready for my ultimate challenge: namely, whole wheat bread.

In an ideal world, I would have planted a patch of wheat, threshed it, milled it and made it into bread. I’m lazy, though, so I took a slight shortcut by buying whole wheat flour at the supermarket.

A brief note regarding the economics of home baking: Five pounds of flour costs about the same as a loaf of factory bread. Throw in a few cents for yeast and shortening, and you can probably bake several loaves of bread for less than a salted caramel double mocha Frappuccino that’s topped with a baseball-sized dollop of whipped cream.

I scoured the internet for whole wheat bread recipes. I found one that struck my fancy, printed it out and went to work.

My early successes had made me cavalier. I carelessly tossed the ingredients together, chucked the dough into a warm oven to proof and waited — and waited and waited.

The dough didn’t rise one iota. My yeast must have gone on vacation; the lump of dough seemed to become denser as time went on. Had I baked it, the result could have been used as a building material or perhaps to clout upside the head a certain someone who, in third grade, shoved your face into the mud and called you “worm breath.”

Not willing to admit defeat, I dug out Mom’s tried-and-true whole wheat bread recipe. Later that day, I pulled a pair of voluptuous, golden-brown loaves from the oven.

It certainly would have been easier and more efficient to simply purchase industrial bread at the supermarket. But then, I wouldn’t have been able to luxuriate in the hedonistic aroma of baking bread and feel my passion soaring as a pat of butter slowly and sensually melted on a steamy slice of heaven.

Jerry Nelson is a recovering dairy farmer from Volga, South Dakota. He and his wife, Julie, have two sons and live on the farm where Jerry’s great-grandfather homesteaded over 110 years ago. Feel free to email him at jerry.n@dairystar.com.