On bread

At home in Cleveland, my dad bakes bread every few months or so, when he feels he's done enough in the yard to spend an afternoon in the kitchen. He's worked through a selection of recipes from Beard on Bread over the past 30 years, teaching himself the art of bread-baking. And his bread is delicious: crusty egg-brushed exteriors yielding into soft slices, all with a warm yeasty smell. Even our dog loved it (she notoriously stole half a loaf off our table one summer, and we still tell the story).

Dad's tried a number of recipes, but he generally turns to his old stand-bys: Cracked-Wheat and Mother's Raisin Bread. He's obsessed with the cracked-wheat, and my mom hints not-so-subtly for raisin when he's in a bread-baking mood. And when he bakes, he devotes himself to the process. Watches over the rising loaves like each one is his first-born. He's been known to sit up hours after the rest of the house has gone to sleep, as he waits for the loaves to bake to burnished perfection.

His favorite part is soaking the raisins in bourbon. (Or gin if he's feeling frisky.)

He's the one who taught me to bake bread. How to follow recipes to the letter, how to test the temperature of each liquid to avoid killing the yeast, how to knead dough until it's soft and pliable. I avoided a lot of first-time mistakes when I started baking on my own because he made them first and told me about them. But mostly I learned to associate the smell of bread and yeast with home, with family lunches around the kitchen table and plates of buttered cracked-wheat toast.

So on Sunday, with nothing but a long, lonely day of grading ahead of me, I set aside the afternoon to bake. Bread takes planning; it takes afternoons (especially when you're as slow as I am). I queued up some old Gilmore Girls episodes and got to work. And it only took 6 hours (I said it was a commitment!) before that yeasty, warm smell began to waft through the kitchen/living room and replace the stale air of my apartment. And I didn't feel so lonely anymore.

I've baked many a pastry over the past few years, but nothing fills me up more than two stout loaves of cracked-wheat bread that make any place feel like Cleveland.