{Bread Chronicles}

I bake bread often.Very, very often.  It began as a way to save money while ensuring my family had extra nutrients they needed {and removed those which they didn't.}  I didn't mind the time because I have my beloved mixer; I'd toss all the ingredients in and voila! It was ready to be baked! Then I came across this incredible recipe. I followed his instructions entirely and 4,000 years  a couple hours later, out came this fantastic {why, yes, I am tooting my own horn}crusty Italian bread. Bread like you get at restaurants with linen clothes and dress codes.  I was amazed, excited, and a little infatuated.  It came out the exact same way every time I made it and I never, Ever cut corners with this recipe.  I began to become discontented with the sandwich bread I made.  It's too heavy, it pulls too much, the crumb is too soggy and the crust too hard.  I found problems every week and finally made my son's lunches without bread.  It's only recently that I've been eying my bread pans and toying with my oven temperatures.  In my quest to perfect my Italian bread baking technique I overlooked the glory of the simple  loaf.  It's not that we don't like sandwich bread; we're bread lovers and usually eat a loaf on Sundays and 2 more throughout the week.  And it's not that we prefer the Italian bread, because we only eat it with one meal.  I was just vain about how that one recipe always worked out; about how I was able to execute a complicated and time-consuming recipe to perfection.  I lost sight of how much more important it is to get thelittle things right.
Mahatma Gandhi once said “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”  Bread instills a peace and certain level of entitlement in us. We expect to be able to have bread, but to have good bread, now that is something else entirely.  I don't know if I see God in bread, but I do see love in it.  I'm on a quest to perfect my bread. I'm going to include my children in the process; giving them an investment in each loaf.  
I want the loaf every time ... of my everyday bread. The bread that sits in our son's lunch box at least once a week, and the first bread we'll give our daughter when we're ready to put her on gluten.  The bread that waits patiently on our counter until someone hungry for an exotic meal sighs and settles for it.  The bread that is a consistent part of our life.

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