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My Mother's Bread

"Kenneth McMurtrey" <kdlam@netdoor.com>
Thu, 6 Nov 2003 22:14:23 -0600
v103.n048.16
As far back as I can remember my mother made bread. She made three types:
cornbread (always baked in a round cast iron skillet and without sugar, 
thank you very much), biscuits, and lite bread. The first two relied on 
baking soda or baking powder for raising power while the lite bread was a 
yeast bread we would call sandwich bread. We lived on a farm in Ozark 
County, Missouri, in the heart of the Ozark Mountains. In that area 
cornbread was for the evening meal, supper. Biscuits were usually for 
breakfast or dinner, particularly for Sunday dinner if fried chicken was 
being served. Folks there did not eat lunch. I was a man, full grown before 
ever I heard the phrase, "Let's do lunch." Lite bread was served for any of 
the three meals and was usually the choice if company was coming to dinner. 
Mom's biscuits were serviceable and delicious but were very large and 
lacked a certain elegance. The cornbread was good excepting those times 
when she forgot to add baking soda with the buttermilk and it didn't rise 
at all. I've never known her to fail with the lite bread, though. It was 
always the same.

My mother made a large batch when she baked. She started by emptying a 5 
lb. bag of Gold Medal bleached all-purpose flour into a white enameled dish 
pan, making a well in it and adding wet ingredients (proofed yeast, salt, 
sugar, melted lard or Crisco, and water) to the well. She stirred flour 
into the liquid gradually to form a wet dough, which was kneaded mostly in 
the pan. The dough was set to rise in a greased bowl and after a time 
punched down and divided by pinching into three portions which were placed 
in an evil looking roasting pan for the second rise. The baking pan was of 
folded sheet iron and had one handle replaced by a piece of bailing wire. 
It was uniformly black from decades of use, and must have dated from the 
early part of the 20th century if not the latter part of the 19th. Three 
large loaves fitted across the shorter dimension in the pan. When the dough 
had risen sufficiently it was baked, in wood-fired stoves in the early 
years of my recollection and later in the oven of our new electric range 
after the REA had strung electric lines to our farm. When it came out of 
the oven she basted the top with melted butter.

It was magnificent! It had a fragrance like no other, no bread that I have 
made myself or bread made by others that I have eaten over the past 40 
years or so since I left home. The crumb was white, and elastic. It was 
fine grained at the bottom of the loaf with larger air bubbles towards the 
top crust. The taste was totally satisfying.  It was fabulous when it still 
had a bit of the oven's heat clinging to it, enough heat to melt the butter 
churned from milk from our Jersey cows. It was particularly good toasted in 
the morning with butter and maybe a bit of blackberry jelly made from 
berries growing below the pond west of the house, or honey collected from 
the farm's bee hives. After I left home I missed it so much I bought a book 
on the subject and started to learn about baking bread. I've learned to 
make pretty good bread over the years and of late it is getting even 
better. Just last week I made some sourdough baguettes and as I ate one I 
thought to myself, "I don't really need to make baguettes any better than 
this." Still, I miss her bread; as much as I like it, mine has never tasted 
quite like hers.

Ten years ago, when she was still making bread, I watched her mix up a 
batch and asked how she had learned to make bread. "Did Grandma teach you?" 
I asked. "No," she said, "I didn't pay much attention to how she made it, 
but after I had left home I missed Mamma's bread so much I got a recipe and 
started trying to make bread." "I've made a lot of bread in my day, and 
it's pretty good," she continued, gazing off into the distance and pausing 
for a moment before adding, "but it never did taste like hers."

Ken McMurtrey

Hattiesburg, Mississippi