I Love Brian, but I hate Bread Machines!

It seems that bread machines came and went and then came back in the US. They are very popular here in France, every mom has one and they sell special organic mixes so your bread is homemade, but with little or or very little effort.

Baking bread from scratch is a joy and a love. There is nothing like the stickiness in your fingers and the feeling of the gluten transforming as you work the dough with your hands, and it is impossible to understand bread without having made many a batch with you hands only, or even with a combination of the Kitchenaid dough hook (yes, that is what that thing is for), and the feel of the dough between your fingers. The outcome is so much better with such little additional effort required.

My first kitchen work was in a bakery and I learned the basics of how bread making.  We had all this fancy equipment from France, one to knead the dough like someone would with their hands, a rolling contraption which made the rolling of a baguette seem so simple, a proofer which let the dough rise so that it would be perfect just when it needed to go in the oven. We had this huge plastic bin full of dough which we took from and added to everyday, a starter.  It grew and transformed as the day went on. In our our family and close family acquaintances a starter has a name, Melvin.  It seems alive, it’s like another living breathing entity on the premises.

Bread seems like a living object when you make it.  It starts out so simply, flour, yeast, water, salt, maybe a little sugar to get the yeast going then, a couple hours later, my favorite food.  Years ago I was the lunch chef in an Italian restaurant.  The first thing I had to do every morning was make the bread, and it was even better than a jog or a walk to clear my mind.  I had a lot of angry feelings at this time, towards a specific individual, and I would think of myself squishing his head every time I kneaded the large amount of dough that would become the bread the restaurant used per day.  It was if I was kneading out all my negative energy and the dough would take it ,and make positive.  By the end of kneading process, I was ready to go on with day.

My daughter was in preschool at the time and I would bring her with me to the restaurant early in the morning.  I had just enough time to make the dough and start its first rise before I would leave and drop her off to school and come back.  She loved sitting on the huge flour bins and watching the Hobart (a large industrial Kitchenaid) work.  I would give her a cup with some dough to take to school for a science project.  The way bread works is dependant on the environment, so are we, I like that.  If it’s rainy that day, maybe the tears come a little more easy, at least they do for me being from New Mexico.

I don’t bake as much bread as I used to, I am in France.  I go to my local boulangerie and have a wonderful choice everyday, but I love that too.  I take my son in the enormous American jogging stroller, the rambunctious Beagle, the Pekingese in the basket underneath and we go get our bread.  Every once in a while I make a beautiful brioche or holiday bread, but my little oven can’t take it. I may not eat bread at every meal, but here in France, it is a sacrilege not to have bread with your meal. By the way, bread has to always be right side up otherwise it’s a bad omen, and I’ve been to very few tables where the old Catholic practice of marking your bread with a cross is forgotten. My husband would be truly angry if bread wasn’t present at the table, it is his history, culture and that of my children.

Why would anyone use a bread machine I ask?  It makes no sense, I tried to be a good French housewife and make it in the bread machine my mother-in-law gave me.  It never came out right and even smelled different from the stuff you make with your hands.  The joy was completely lost.  I didn’t have to search for the warmest place in the house so it would rise properly, I didn’t get to beat it down at least once.  Bread lost all magic with the bread machine.  I will never use that contraption again.