Happiness is a slice of warm bread

School began yesterday.  The kids grumbled, but were surprisingly ready long before it was time to drive to the bus stop.  It was bittersweet for me.  Another first day of school.  Another year of not teaching.  After almost 20 years in various classrooms,  I still feel like I should be in the classroom, greeting my new group of high school students, writing my first month of lessons during the mandatory in-services (LOL), and frantically searching for the binder that holds my notes on Beowulf.  But for the second year, I am simply standing at the bus stop watching my children turn into teenagers, knowing that for the oldest her days at the bus stop are rapidly coming to an end.

As they drive away, my attention turns to more immediate demands.  The denizens of my accidental farm are hungry.  The grey hen pecks my hand, a reminder that I am late with their breakfast, and Pinky Tuscadaro and Spike, the two pigs, stand by their trough, grunting at me through the fence.  Even the goats get into the act, jumping around the pen, screeching, "maaaawh."  Fifteen minutes later, water buckets are cleaned and filled, and all are busily eating.

I look at the sky, gray, overcast.  Fall in Alaska means rain. And more rain. Its a bread baking-kind of day.

I must confess that I make really good bread.  Not quite as good as my mom's, whose baking bread's aroma summoned my brothers and I to the kitchen, where we waited, knives and butter in hand, until she pulled the golden loaves out of the oven. We sliced into the still-hot loaf, blissfully ignoring her half-hearted warnings that we would get stomach aches from eating bread while it was too hot.  At the Kenai Peninsula State Fair last weekend, that honey-wheat bread recipe won a blue ribbon for the second year in a row.  When the bread won first place at the fair last year,  I mailed her the blue ribbon. 

I set about making four loaves of honey-wheat bread and two loaves of raisin bread.  From the first step of the process, raising the yeast, there is a touch of anxiety.  In the back of my mind, I wonder if I am going to kill the yeast with water that is too hot or too cold.  Like Goldilocks, the water temperature must be just right. When I first began making bread, I rushed through the kneading process.  Mix the flour into the yeast, slap the dough around the counter, and off in the corner to rise.  Now, I have learned, or am learning, the value of patience as the dough is pressed, rolled, and stretched until my hands ache and the dough is satiny smooth under my fingertips. 

The dough goes into a large pottery bowl and set aside on the counter.  I cover it with a clean dishtowel, thinking once again that I really should make a pretty patchwork cover just for the bread.  Maybe one of these rainy afternoons I will do just that.  Three hours after I begin, the loaves emerge from the oven, hot, soft, and light brown, just waiting for the pat of butter to melt across its slices. A bowl of homemade minestrone soup, salad greens from the garden, and dinner is served.