Guest Author - Terrie Lynn Bittner

One of my earliest memories is of standing on a stool at the kitchen counter in my grandmother’s Georgia home, making my own tiny loaf of bread as she made the big loaves for the family. I can still hear her voice coaxing and encouraging. “Use the palm of your hand. There you go! Rock just a little. Now turn it. Fold it like this. Wonderful! You’re so smart!” I beamed with pride at my one and only domestic talent.

In later years, her health caused her to give up bread baking and I gave it up, too. However, when I moved to Utah as a young mother, I quickly became aware that everyone in my neighborhood made bread. Looking at the recipe, I felt uncertain. I was really not at all domestic and I wasn’t much of a cook. My husband’s cousin offered to teach me, suggesting that I’d understand it better if I could feel the bread as it went through the stages. She quickly tossed together the ingredients and then went to work kneading. Periodically, she had me touch or knead the bread and I tried to remember what I was learning.

The next day, I made my first loaves of bread since preschool days. At first, I felt uneasy. The dough seemed too sticky, too weak. My hands faltered at the kneading process. And then, as if by magic, the dough began to feel elastic. My hands slipped into a rhythm. I watched over it anxiously as it rose twice and when the finished bread came from the oven, I could almost hear my grandmother saying, “That’s perfect! You are such a good cook.”

I made bread twice a week for all the years I lived in Utah, often accompanied by my own preschooler, and then got busy with a special needs child and her stair-step brother. My husband presented me with a bread machine and I marveled at how easy bread making was-and how dull. Somehow it didn’t taste as good either.

And then, sitting in a Relief Society board meeting, a discussion arose about teaching the sisters to make bread with no machines of any kind, not even a mixer. Several women expressed doubt, but I foolishly exclaimed that it was fun and easy. Needless to say, I found myself scheduled to teach a bread making class. I wasn’t any more domestic or skilled at cooking than I had been the day I first learned, so I nervously decided I’d better practice and see if I could still do this. To my surprise, although my mind did not remember exactly what to do, my hands did. They slipped effortlessly into the kneading process and I felt the same doubts about the quality of the dough, and the same delighted surprise as it began to miraculously take shape under my hands. I also felt the same closeness to my grandmother, who was now dead.

Making bread with children today might seem like a foolish waste of time. It’s so cheap to buy bread and so easy to use a bread machine, especially when you can buy mixes. However, there are good reasons to bake your own bread, perhaps not every week, but periodically, and to do it with your children. There may be a time when your financial situation may not even allow the purchase of bread. Since Latter-day Saints are counseled to store basic food items, the ingredients for bread making can be easily stored if you choose a recipe that does not require any perishables. If you are like me, that emergency time is exactly when the bread machine will break!

Finally, though, the best reason to bake bread with your children is because it’s fun. Kneading is the perfect stress reliever and is also great exercise for the arms. Children love playing with the dough and kneading bread is more practical than playing with clay. Standing side-by-side at the counter, kneading the bread, is quality time. Teaching your child is exciting, and later, when he knows what to do, you can just talk or sing while you knead. The kneading takes ten minutes and you can do a lot of quality talking or listening in ten minutes! Those precious hours spent together will create a bond that lasts long after you are gone. Every time I make a loaf of bread, I feel my grandmother lovingly hovering over me, encouraging and helping.

Maybe that’s why bread is the only thing I can cook.