About
Knead To Be Loaved was born of my love of baking and a year’s worth of trials and errors associated with baking bread. Baking has long been a part of my life, and is an inherent part of my Midwestern-Scandinavian-Lutheran upbringing. Every woman in my family, regardless of their ability to cook, can bake. It’s like we possess a gene that closely resembles the molecules of flour. A gene that is likely a close cousin to the one that draws us to Pancake Breakfast fundraisers and Friday Fish Fry.
My fondest childhood memories involve spending time with my grandmother, Sylvia, every summer, learning to bake and sew. It was better than going to camp, and it was like no other camp that existed, even today. No video games, no internet, no extreme sports or cable television. It was just a week with my grandmother and the McNeill-Lehrer News Hour.
It was during these summer experiences that I discovered the joy of entering things in the county fair. On the way to her house, we’d stop by the county agricultural fair office to pick up our premium book. The newsprint pages categorically listed, as they do today, every class and division for entering items in the fair to be judged. Almost anything can be entered into a county fair, from sewing and quilting to beans and produce to cookies and breads. When we arrived at her home, my grandmother and I would sit at her Duncan-Phyfe table, she with her Sanka, and I with my Tang. She would sharpen her pencil with her little clock pencil sharpener and page by page, we would decide what our projects for the week would be.
The first few days of Camp Grandma were spent making clothes. I would attempt to sew something basic, like a skirt, and she would help me correct my mistakes. We’d take our time and make sure that our entries were hung with care on the hangers and properly stored in garment bags. I’d fill out the entry tag and carefully seal our names under the flap for anonymity.
Two days before open-class judging, we’d begin our baking spree. We usually started with the fruit and vegetable breads, since they stayed fresh a little longer, often even improving with a couple days’ rest before slicing. Then we made cookies and hot crossed buns and garlic knots and bars. “Bars,” for the uninitiated, baking-gene deprived readers from places other than Wisconsin and Minnesota, is code for bar cookies.
The morning of judging at the fair, we’d rise early to get started on the last of the yeast breads. We’d make two loaves of each bread and decide which of the two was the best representative of our work. We did not have food processors or bread machines, so we would knead everything by hand . She taught me an easy way of kneading breads in bulk, and my hands to this day, automatically move in that same pattern the minute they touch a malleable dough. She taught me how to roll a ball of dough gently on the curve of skin between my thumb and forefinger, creating a seamless sphere of yeasty perfection. She would cast watchful glances and remind me not to use too much flour, or the bread would get too dry and crumbly.
Then we’d shower, and off we would go, smelling like pink Dove soap and Flex conditioner, to the fair, the backseat of her beige Ford Taurus piled high with entries.
Down in the basement of my house, now more than fifteen years since my last week of camp at Grandma’s, there is a box of red, white, blue and purple ribbons. Each one of them a physical reminder of those beautiful summers with a woman who represents all I hope to grow to be. On the back, marked in pen, is a detailed caption of what entry earned the ribbon. The blue for first place, the red for second, and the white for third. The purple ribbons were reserved for the overall champion of each category. Topped with a large rosette, the purple ribbon is the most coveted ribbon of any county fair. It’s the one the crowd looks at first when passing through the exhibits. It’s the one that boasts who outperformed everyone else in the county. My grandmother and I brought home our share of purple ribbons for our work over the years, each time filled with the same excitement one would feel if Publisher’s Clearing House knocked at the door with a giant cardboard check.
Now grown and married, I still spend the week before the fair summoning up those memories of my grandmother. This year, I added eight more ribbons to my county fair collection, taking top honors with my grand champion cookie, several first place awards, a handful of seconds, and a couple of third places.
Fresh baked breads and pastries are always good, but like most things, the true reward is in the experience of creating them.
