I'd long been looking at the pictures of freshly baked bread in my mom's Betty Crocker cookbook. Then I thought, "Well...Why not try?" Bread has always seemed an impossible piece of heaven to achieve, something for other people to do. And then, just like that, I was doing it. It's strange how the kneading and the rising felt so right, as if my bones and muscles were doing something distinctly human. The dough rose on the porch, where it was a generous 90 degrees. The result was a little bit of perfection and, of course, I felt compelled to share. I delivered bread to neighbors with a feeling of joy in my heart. It is a lost art that I will be enjoying for a long time to come.
