During a visit with my grandparents in the summer of 1990, my grandma gave me an extremely valuable gift, a gift I can pass on to my daughters as well. My grandma taught me how to bake bread.
We had just finished a game of cribbage, my grandpa was going to have a nap, and my grandma said she was going to bake some bread for dinner. I asked if I could help and told her I’d always wanted to learn to bake bread. I never thought I’d be able to make my own bread without a bread-maker, the whole process looked so complicated and getting an edible result wasn’t guaranteed.
Grandma didn’t have a recipe, she had been baking bread for close to 50 years at that time and added ingredients until “things were right”. I mixed together flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Grandma added water and told me to stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture started to clump together. I continued to stir using my hands when the dough became to hard to stir with the spoon.
Grandma then showed me how to knead the dough right in the bowl. She didn’t want to mess up her clean counter-tops. She threw the dough down and punched it and folded it, claiming the exercise kept her in shape. After the dough proofed, she showed me how to form it into a loaf. She flatted out a rectangle of dough, rolled it up and then plopped it into a loaf pan where she let it proof again until the dough was almost oozing over the sides of the pan.
We put the bread in the oven, a “hot oven” according to Grandma (I checked, it was 400°F) for 10 minutes, and then lowered the temperature to 375°F and let it bake for 40 minutes. I was eager to try my bread, but Grandma said we had to let it cool because the loaf was “still baking”.
10 minutes later, I had a slice of most delicious bread I’d ever tasted.
If you’ve enjoyed my green onion cakes, pizza, pita, naan, or my cinnamon buns, you’ve got my Grandma to thank.
The Universal Chan 