Bread

Everyday alchemy

Bread has to be one of humanity’s greatest inventions—right up there with fire, the wheel, and Netflix.

This is Erin’s bread. A boule made from just four ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast (technically, sourdough starter, a minor miracle in itself). She bakes it at 500 degrees in a cast-iron Dutch oven, and the aroma is so incredible, I can barely stand to let it cool.

Carmelized, nutty, toasted grain, yeast, malt—it smells of love, home, and family. It reminds us of our mothers and grandmothers. Breaking bread binds families and loved ones together. The transformation of wet sticky goo into golden crusty bread is pure magic. Perhaps the reason medieval alchemists believed it was possible to turn base metal into gold is that they watched it being done daily in the village bakery.

There is something primal about fresh-baked bread, literally. The earliest form of agrarian society probably came together to share bread. It represents harvest and labor and community. In terms of human development, its creation feels barely one step removed from fire itself—at the very root of what separates humanity from the animals. We are the bread-makers! Is there any food more fundamental or life-affirming? It may sound like I’m exaggerating here, but I honestly don’t think so.

There’s a reason why we think of manna, the spiritual and physical sustenance God provided the Israelites in the desert, as bread. It saved a starving people and also nourished their souls. It created community and uplifted a nation. What about the Eucharist? Communion wafers may be unleavened, but they are undeniably bread, elevated to a sacred metaphor. The miraculous transmutation of flower and yeast into the physical embodiment of Christ’s resurrection—what more powerful example of our profound relationship with bread can there be?

Margaret Atwood said it better than I can in her poem, All Bread. Read it yourself, or listen to Pádraig Ó Tuama discuss it on “Poetry Unbound,” my favorite poetry podcast. The poem describes the life-sustaining nourishment that arises from fertile soil, itself created by the death and decay of living things. Bread contains not just life but the full cycle of life and death. Creation from destruction.

Lift these ashes

into your mouth, your blood;

to know what you devour

is to consecrate it

Now go find some fresh-baked bread or make your own. Marvel at the steam that arises when you crack it open. The snap of the crust. The smell of the crumb. It’s a bit of magic you can hold in your hand. Add a little butter and honey, and it’s still about the best thing humanity has ever created.

Sorry, Netflix. Better luck next time. :)