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For a long time, I’ve enjoyed learning about where our food comes from and which ways of obtaining it are good for us, and good for the environment. I really dislike taking single words like “organic”, “natural”, or even “fresh” at face value to reassure my choices and dismiss my responsibility to know what I’m eating. (An unfortunately popular technique especially in this city). Usually there are few or confusing regulations on using these words, so I find that keeping up on current research and reading full labels and ingredient lists gives me a more accurate picture of what’s the better choice. (Some of the most fascinating stuff if you’re interested comes from Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dillema and this blog on nutrition and individual foods: http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/)

Side note: actually, that blog is even more broad. It’s also about cooking, news from the FDA and USDA, and other changes in the American nutritional scene. I suggest everyone check it out, as the blogger has much experience with the study of nutrition, and before that, a career in engineering. The writing covers a lot of territory without it being too dense. I don’t always agree, but it certainly allows one to make better informed decisions about food.

All of this leads up to what I did this weekend. My family has a long standing tradition of giving away food for the holiday. Nothing strange about that, across the country people give cookies, pastries, cheeses, wine and a number of other foods to friends and neighbors at this time of year. What’s weird is the effort my parents have put into producing a food item that they can give an entire story to and even now take great pride in the process, repeating the story at the drop of a hat. For all their effort, they give an American food standard: wheat bread.

It’s uncommon to know the full path of a single food product, and even here I can’t tell you backstory about the honey, yeast or salt in the bread. I can tell you, however, exactly the origin of the main ingredient, wheat flour.

One of my uncles is a farmer whose primary crop is wheat (by volume…it’s very difficult to make a profit on wheat without being an industrial sized farm, so heifers are the more necessary ‘crop’). Most every year, my dad goes down to help him bring in the winter wheat crop, and brings back a big box of unprocessed wheat grain. Once back at my parents house, he grinds the wheat in his own hand-turned grinder. My mom takes the wheat and turns it into bread, which is then delivered hot and fragrant one weekend in December to friends and neighbors.

This year, I’m nearby, so I was quickly recruited for this year’s process. My mom has a problem with her arm currently that makes it pretty painful to complete manual labor like kneading. Therefore, the bread making became a two person process – she combined ingredients in the mixer, and turned it out into a bigger pile of flour in a bowl where I took over kneading the bread. After letting the bread rise, I rolled each batch out, separated it into quarters, and rolled each up into pretty loaves to rise again and bake to a golden surface.

There are a few inconsistencies here. Those who know me are probably suspicious at this point that I would spend any time, much less a full day involving 8 batches or 32 loaves of bread-making in the kitchen. WHY would I be so involved in this process? OK, I admit, the first reason was guilt. It’s been years since I helped with this, and there is nothing wrong with my arms, so why wouldn’t I help with the labor intensive parts? Secondly, though, it’s important to walk the talk. I don’t know where every food I eat comes from, but helping others to have a relatively healthy food item that we do know a lot about is a good thing. Thirdly, now’s a good of a time as any to learn the techniques inherent in making homemade bread. It certainly wasn’t explicit in the recipe, so hands-on learning helped me create muscle and sensory memory of what the bread feels/smells/looks like at each stage if done right. And fourthly, it made me more popular with both family for helping out and neighbors for delivering two of the loaves that warm up a snowy winter night.

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