Oh, how my family loves fresh bread. It is has been a part of the rhythm of my life as far as memory goes back. Bread is central to my faith. Jesus is the bread of life. We eat bread together in my faith community as an act of remembrance. We celebrate holidays with special family bread recipes. I have always made homemade bread on occasion. And we eat sandwiches every day. Benjamin in particular must take his own lunch every day to school and often to other events. Bread is a staple.
But bread is now complicated. For a long time, there were plenty of choices in the stores for me to buy bread that my family would eat. Then we started to notice the warning labels increasingly on multiple brands of bread under the ingredient list: Warning: May contain traces of peanuts or tree nuts. OR Warning: This bread is made a facility that uses peanuts and tree nuts. Over and over again we began to see our choices dwindle to one or two. There was definitely a quality difference in what we could safely eat. The kids put their collective feet down and declared one brand off the list. I sighed. I understood. Bad bread is not really the same. I started working hard to make homemade bread again.
But, as I recently explained to a colleague of mine at work, it is really hard to be Ma in Little House on the Prairie in 2012 Minnesota. Work demands, car pool demands, and the pace of life began to make homemade bread making difficult.
We were down to really one choice of bread. Then, Costco quit carrying the line. (Please, Costco, bring it back!) Joel and I shed quiet tears and then focused on staying positive and finding the creative solution. Homemade bread it would have to be. We could share the bread making responsibilities as a family. And we found a wonderful book: Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day. It works! It is good. The children love it.
We appreciate our bread. We are so grateful to have our bread. Our home smells heavenly. A food allergy is a journey. You never know what is around the bend. It takes a lot of work to manage. But, blessings float back to you in ways that you would never expect. Sunday nights I am laughing with my husband in the kitchen mixing bread and Monday morning I am slicing homemade bread and making sandwiches for my two children.
Benjamin's BlogDog 