Lesson 25 Bread Comes to Life

Bread comes to life, a garden of wheat and a loaf to eat by George Levinson. Bread is the food we eat every day. So many kinds, so many ways. White bread, black bread, small bread, tall bread, thin bread, twin bread, dinner rolls, bread with holes. Hard, day old, tough bread. Soft squishy, fluffy bread, bread is toast, bread is crumbs, bread is pizza. Bread is buns. How is bread made? Where is it from? This baker makes his bread from scratch. By sowing wheat in his backyard patch. Soon those seeds send down roots and sprout into shoots of bright green grass. The day pass and the grass grow into sturdy blades, tall and straight, fondly made, with budding heads and bristling hair. Gently waving in the air. When the crop is ripe and old, the tops are bowed, and stretched with gold. And every head of wheat contains many tiny finished grains. Time to cut the golden field, gather up the backyard yield, stack up piles of sun dried stalks, rub them in a threshing box, it's the simple old-time Miller's craft of separating wheat from chaff. What's left are seeds, oh hefty load, so many times the numbers sowed. And each new grain of harvest wheat looks just like a loaf to eat. Now, in the hour to grind those grains into whole wheat flour. With simple tools and easy rules, it's one with the show to make up some dough. And bring fresh bread to life. Yeast, honey, water, flour, salt, oil, and muscle power. Dump it, thump it, dust it, knead it, squash it, stretch it. Toss it. Set it aside to rest and rise, it grows and grows to twice the size. Punch it down. Give it some shape. Let it rise again. Put it in to bake. Slice it fresh. It's better than cake. Whatever the shape it finally takes. Wherever the place is fondly bakes. Every day we are blessed with a mountain of bread. It's the staff of life. May all be fed.