Bread

I have been walking around the house for two days spelling: Sea, Eye, A, Bee, A, Double Tee, A, Ciabatta. The latest Jack-in-the-Box spelling bee ad has seeded itself in my noggin like a tune that plays over and over. The current series of ads are very clever. I began paying attention to them when Jack returned from vacation with a woman who knew the ciabatta recipe. I had to laugh When Jack shared a ciabatta sandwich with a customs inspector, but the spelling bee ad has got me imitating little Jack’s sing- song spelling of the word.

The appearance of the ciabatta buns in the ads remind me of home baked breads and rolls the women in our family used to make. These days we have the convenience of baking a single loaf in a machine that sits on the kitchen counter, or buying a loaf of frozen bread dough to bake in the oven, but when I was young, bread was made in batches large enough to last several days.

In the kitchen of the asparagus farm, we had a large cast iron stove with double water reservoirs and a warming oven across the top. Wood and coal was used to heat the stove for cooking and baking year round. When Mom made bread, she mixed the dough in a large crock, let it rise until it had been ‘punched down’ at least once, and then made it into loaves or rolls. If there was a second batch to be baked, it went in the oven as soon as the first batch finished baking. Mom always brushed tops of the hot bread and rolls with butter as soon as they came out of the oven.

Mom always mixed the batch of dough, but Adeline and I often helped with the baking. My brothers also helped as they got older. Mom started teaching all of us how to cook and bake when we were small. All five brothers became excellent cooks and one enjoyed gourmet cooking.

One of our favorite snacks after school was fried bread. Being the oldest, I was the one usually making it while the others waited impatiently for a piece. Fried bread was made from a pinch of fresh dough, stretched to the size of one’s hand and deep fried to a golden brown in Crisco. Each piece was slathered with butter. To keep from burning our fingers it was switched from hand to hand as we tried to keep the melted butter from running down our wrists. Sometimes we sprinkled it with powdered sugar.

One day during the 1960s, a girl friend introduced me to the wife of an American Indian. The two of them invited me to join them in attending an Indian powwow in Los Angeles. They raved about how delicious Squaw bread was and I was curious to know what it was like. My mother was named after her great grandmother, an American Indian, and I grew up hearing stories about her, but I had never heard of Squaw bread. The first thing we did when we got to the powwow was to head for the food booths. When we were served the bread, I was surprised and amused. I exclaimed that I had grown up with this kind of bread, but my friends refused to believe me.