I’ll get a rise out of you: Bread-baking meditation

The timer dinged next to my head. I awoke in disoriented grogginess from my nest of blankets on the living room floor, an old black and white movie flickering quietly on the TV set. Time to check the bread dough and see if it had risen to the appropriate level of springiness, whatever that was--this novice bread-baker wasn't sure and she had a long way to go before she tasted bread.

Bread Baking 101 lesson learned one Saturday night in high school, many years ago: Read the recipe all the way through. 

In your mouth-watering anticipation of the cinnamon swirl bread recipe in your mom’s Joy of Cooking, you may miss the cumulative clock effect of two risings in the bowl, followed by a third rising in the pan. Thus you may find yourself sleeping on the living room floor, the retreat you chose in recognition of the deep, deep abyss of sleep into which you will fall if you get into an actual bed since you are Sleeper Girl.

Despite this inauspicious beginning, off and on over the years I’ve been a bread baker. Usually whole wheat, sometimes bricklike. I used the Kitchen-Aid I got as a wedding present in 1986 from Grandma Humphrey so much for the kneading phase that eventually it gave off a light burning aroma when I ran it with those heavy batches of whole grain.

This led to The Great Kitchen-Aid Debacle. It makes me sad to relate this tale, as my mother raised me to believe in the brand virtues of Kitchen-Aid. She wasn’t wrong, as that 1986 mixer ran well into the early 2000s (outlasting the marriage). It worked even with the light burning smell, but that made me a tad nervous.

Hence my decision to invest in the new heavy-duty model with a bigger engine. BIG mistake. About five minutes into the second batch of bread dough the thing stopped dead. I mean DEAD. What the--? Let it rest a minute or two, try again. Nothing. I had the joy of finishing a big batch of bread dough kneading by hand when that hadn’t been part of my time calculation for the process.

This heat death happened not once, and not twice. When the third one quit—the second replacement unit—I just gave up. The guy at the local small-appliance repair shop (these do actually still exist, at least in Spokane) told me I could spend $75 on parts and labor and still have a problem because this super-duper Kitchen-Aid came from a line that had a faulty thermostat or some such.

The mixer sat in the garage for a while and then eventually disappeared, possibly in a cleaning/donating frenzy. I didn’t bake bread for a while. Life got pretty full and the hours it took to knead dough by hand and then tend it through three risings seemed too big a commitment.

I wondered why today as I stood at the kitchen counter, rocking slightly as I leaned into the batch of whole wheat bread with yogurt and quinoa I was kneading. The calm of the kitchen soothes me and I achieve a level of meditative peace as I work the dough.

I can’t tweet or post Facebook updates or read email while I’m kneading bread. I can’t get distracted and turn from the activity I’m engaged in to something else entirely and then jump back the way I do at work with my two monitors and long to-do list. I can't go to Google in search of some random factoid and find myself an hour and a half later catching up on my blog reading backlog. (Thank all the gods for "mark all as read." Those people at Google know me.)

There is only the bread, and the anticipation of eating it warm from the oven with butter and honey.

I stand where I can’t see the clock so I can truly get lost in the rhythm. The New Laurel's Kitchen serves as the holy text for my practice. Its friendly and practical descriptions of what to look for and how to turn dough into various items has tempted me from straight whole wheat bread loaves into whole wheat pita, wheat/oatmeal, and this week’s wheat/quinoa/yogurt rendered as a loaf and eight English muffins.

The first loaf always disappears in a family feeding frenzy reminiscent of those South American death-by-piranha scenes in bad old jungle movies (probably what I watched all those years ago on my lonely bread-rising vigil). The second might last a day or two longer. Since I can’t devote a full day midweek to a second batch we do still buy some store bread for sandwiches, but I’d like to drop that and turn out a batch of four loaves on the weekend to get us through the week.

Problem is, I really can’t knead THAT much dough alone. I’ll need a Kitchen-Aid….

Thank you for the gift of friendship: Goodbye, Christianne

This post is an extended version of an email I sent out today to the wonderful women of Second Saturdays. The notes I got back as replies made me think I should post this and give them the chance to add to it, if they want to.

First, the saddest thing I've had to type in a long time: The memorial service for Christianne Sharman is this Saturday, Jan. 30, 4pm at Millwood Presbyterian. 

Many of us knew and loved Chrissie. It is just SHITTY (there is no other word for it—good thing Mom isn’t on the Internet to watch my language) that she is gone. She was such a strong and beautiful woman who taught me things without even knowing she did.

I miss her.

She never knew that she herself was the inspiration for Second Saturdays, the “grownup friendship space” I’ve blogged about. I should have told her this story when I could.

I had been meeting all these great women in various circles and wishing I could get to know them better, but never really doing anything about it. I got to know Chrissie a bit thanks to suggesting her as a possible board member for what was then the Spokane PR Council (now the Spokane Regional MarComm Association).

(I don't know if she ever knew THAT, either--that I was the one who suggested her for the board--not sure she would have thanked me since she ended up being the treasurer, which is always a thankless job in any small all-volunteer board :D).

I was so impressed with her and wanted to get to know her better, but didn't have a way to do that because we were all so busy being board members when we met.

So I sent out that first email suggesting the idea that we need to schedule girlfriend time--not just with people who are our friends now, but with people who might be great friends if we had the time to get to know each other. I went through my contact list and picked lots of wonderful women I encountered in professional circles.

We have so few playgrounds in our adult lives that it's tough to get to know someone at the swingset or teeter-totter level. Hence that first gathering at Rockwood Bakery years ago.

I don't even know how many years ago now, but others who were there at the beginning think we may have started in 1999. Over ten years? I believe it. 

At the same time, thinking about how quickly those years have flown, I realize all over again how easy it is to lose track of time, to forget to say the things you need to say and to see your friends because calendars get full.

Why didn’t I just call her up and see if she wanted to have coffee? Well, I was shy. (Insert maniacal laughter here from people who know me.) But I was.

She was so strong, and so very clear about her boundaries. That had already come through in our board meetings, where she was polite and firm about what she would and would not take on as a board member. If she declined the coffee I would never know if she didn’t have time, or wasn’t really interested in getting to know me beyond our contact as board members. She would be too kind to hurt my feelings.

It sounds so funny to me now, all these years later after having the privilege of her friendship. But back then it was kind of like giving a party in high school to which you invite the guy or girl you secretly like.

You hope he/she won’t end up hooking up with your best friend at the party. You hope you’ll have a long and meaningful talk in somewhat dim lighting, planting the seeds for something that blossoms over time. Having other people around provides a social buffer so you’re not left hanging while your heart gets broken.

Okay, now I’m really taking dramatic license. But I do remember feeling slightly (or more than slightly) intimidated and at the same time hopeful that I was about to make a new and fantastic friend in Christianne, along with all the other great women of Second Saturdays.

It worked. We did form those friendships. No dim lighting, just great coffee and pastries and conversation. And Chrissie, with her beautiful long hair, scarves draped carelessly around her neck in that effortless way that magazine stylists strive to imitate, such a style and strength and kindness, all that warmth and encouragement, funny, wry insights and indignation about crazy/bad politics and focused listening so you knew she really heard what you said. 

I still hear her voice.

Thank you, Chrissie, for all your gifts to me as your friend.