Homemade Bread Day

I noticed something when I woke up today:  People of a certain age have more aches and pains in a cold, damp climate.  Oh well, at least I woke up!  There's always something to be thankful for, even on a November Monday morning.

Like excellent bread, for instance. Today is Homemade Bread Day. And won't you be glad when this ridiculous gluten-free fad fades away?  People have been eating bread for a long time, and estimates date the origin of bread back to 10,000 B.C.

We had bread with just about every meal when I was growing up.  Usually a stack of white slices with margarine, or butter if we were lucky.  Bread had multiple functions at the dinner table-- sopping up gravy and spaghetti sauce, or "filler" if you were still hungry at the end of the meal. There were rarely any left-overs at our house.

Everyone has childhood bread memories.  John says the their family stopped at the bakery outlet after church and bought enough loaves to feed an Italian family of six for a week. That's a lot of bread. My mother made simple, cake-like white bread. It looked just like this, and it was wonderful buttered hot and dunked in homemade soup.

My 1967 Betty Crocker Cookbook has several variations of plain white bread recipes.  It was no big deal. Girls learned to make bread in Home Ec class, although I don't remember anyone baking crusty "specialty" bread at home back then. You could always buy a loaf of "French" or "Vienna" bread at the grocery store for under a dollar.  Bread machines were popular once, but people are too busy now for even that. 

Baking bread is always time well-spent.