Kneading Bread

I just wanted real bread.

I found myself at the supermarket with a simple grocery list: oranges, carrots, olive oil, juice, bread.... I went to the bread aisle and stood in front of my plastic-bagged choices under the bright fluorescents of the modern grocery store. I noticed squishy loaves of Sara Lee were on sale, then I considered a loaf of whole wheat. I meandered over to the pumpernickle and take-and-bakes, looking for something else, something more. Standing there, I just couldn't reach out and pick one. I knew they were all the same. I knew I wanted real bread.

At home, I grabbed the bread flour my friend Amber gifted me from a recent trip to Kansas (she is truly one of the few people that knows me well enough to gift me a bag of flour and know I'd be thrilled), the yeast, the salt. I proofed the yeast in just-warm-enough water with a pinch of sugar. I warmed some buttermilk and measured flour into the bowl of my mixer, fully intending to use the paddle and hook attachments as any modern KitchenAid-equipped person would.

Only I didn't. I grabbed a wooden spoon instead and started stirring, the quiet of the kitchen uninterrupted. As the dough came together, I tipped the bowl onto the counter, rolled up my sleeves, and started kneading, slowly bringing more flour into the folds, feeling the warmth and heft of the dough in my hands, gauging the tackiness and elasticity to get it "just right."

The only time I take my wedding ring off is when I'm kneading dough. I never thought much about this before, as it's a completely practical move, but as I was kneading the dough in my tiny sun-lit kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, flour dusting my hands and worn t-shirt, the comforting warmth of the oven a step away, the quiet unbroken, for one brief moment, I felt myself fall away. I forgot about the yoga class I was going to try to catch later that day. I heard Ben playing trucks, but it was a distant sound. I knew my husband was in the other room, sitting in the sun reading, but it wasn't a conscious thought. I wasn't thinking about the chores I needed to do, or the articles I needed to write, or the garden I was going to plant this spring. I wasn't even really aware of me being me. I was simply a woman kneading, incorporating flour into dough into bread into nourishment into life like countless generations of women before me.

I just wanted real bread. What I received was so much more: it was a real connection.