Whatever else you have on your mind,
Wherever else you think you're going,
Stop for a moment and look where you are:
You Have Arrived!

Our Daily Bread:
Thoughts from Kaye

by Kaye Bailey, Published July 5, 2005, You Have Arrived

In grand resolution style on January 1, 1997 I opened Betsy Oppenneer's The Bread Book and followed her recipe for basic white bread. Thus began my odyssey to become a bread baker. From that first marginally good loaf of homemade bread I was hooked. I devoured the book working my way through the white breads to the wheat to the multi-grain and into sourdough. Along the way I gained 60 pounds. You see, I believed that baking bread and eating copious amounts of bread were two intrinsically linked activities.

By early 1999 my body was expanding at the same rate as my yeast dough in a warm kitchen. It was time for a drastic change. September 1999: gastric bypass surgery. We, my husband and I, agreed bread baking was a thing of the past. It simply was no longer a part of my life. And so it wasn’t for several months. Goodbye bread baker; Hello stranger.

At first I didn’t miss my Sunday afternoon bread baking – I was too busy shrinking and living. But then as I entered the phase of strangeness, of not knowing myself, I began to yearn for the bygone days of baking bread. I wanted to feel the dough grow under my working hands, to dust the board with flour, to smell the yeast, to watch it rise. I wanted to fill the house with the heavenly aroma of baking bread and pull handcrafted loaves from the oven. I wanted to feel the pride I once enjoyed in baking bread. I wanted to bring back that part of me, the bread baker.

Don’t get me wrong, there were many things I loved about the new me. I loved my workouts, my new-found energy and my ever shrinking body. It was joyful to discover I wasn’t big boned after all. I loved manicures, pedicures and shopping. I was adjusting. Even so, it all felt strange. I needed to re-connect with some part of who I once was.

I needed to bake bread.

In a near covert moment I pulled my neglected bread book from the shelf with longing. It fell open to the oatmeal bread recipe – the very recipe that was my signature bread. "Cake Bread" my husband calls it for it’s texture and honey-sweetened oat flavor. And there in my kitchen on a snowy March morning I returned to baking bread. The familiar smell of the yeast and the soft supple texture of the dough were old friends returned. I shaped the loaves and watched them rise. I reveled in the smell as they baked for exactly 28 minutes in the oven. And with tremendous pride I pulled those loaves from the oven and I wept.

I wept because part of me that I had forsaken was back. I wept because I understood what I did not know before: that the act of baking bread is what gave me pleasure, not the act of eating the bread.

These days I bake bread regularly. Occasionally I enjoy a very thin slice, lightly toasted. I eat that slice slowly, enjoying the textures and flavors. I eat it plain, no longer dipped in a vat of butter like I did when I could eat a half-a-loaf in short order. I’ve made adjustments to my recipe: the addition of soy flour and egg for more protein, flax meal for healthy omega-3s, and extra wheat bran for more fiber. The new-improved bread is good for the body and good for the soul. Today I am more self-respecting because I understand I am a bread baker, not a bread eater.

Kaye's Oatmeal Bread

© 2005-2007 Kaye Bailey - All Rights Reserved