Experiments in Hlaf

"In Egypt they ate quite simply. Every-day bread was made from spelt, the dried pounded centers of the sacred lotus plants, and for feasts fine wheaten flour in loaves. They caught fish and spread them in the sun to dry, thick with salt."  – M.F.K. Fisher, "Greek Honey and the Hon-ZO"









As I look through the bottom rack of the grocery shelf for the latest organic instant packet for some form of bread making or another, I have nothing over the ancients. I take my boxed packet of banana bread home with me, quickly read the illustrated instructions on back – whip the liquids, add nuts (if chosen), then add the mix, stir and unload into a greased pan. Bake for an hour and it is nicely assured that my kitchen at least will smell of that wonderful combination of banana and grain that is impossible to duplicate in any other way but baking.  I like that it is fast and do appreciate made banana bread over store-bough, no how good that version is.  At the moment of cutting through the first piece, as it still steams in the middle, and lather with a pat of butter, I think back to the hundred loaves that I 'made' via the bread machine, the familiar sound of the cycles from warming, to mixing, to sitting and rising and finally baking. Again, the kitchen alive with a sort of genetically familiar smell that got there in the DNA from 30,000 years of the human history of baking.  I too have tried my hand at the hand mixing of ingredients, the eventual fold-over and the baking, but it has always felt something like the novice fisherman who is sent out into the middle of the lake to find his catch not knowing where and why they may lurk. Anybody can hold a pole and swing a line; the good

fisherman knows the edges of the structures of the lake, time of day, and that the size of the common frog he is trying to replicate. To that analogy it seems a responsible thing to do find out first that the Old English word for bread was hlaf, or modern loaf.  Bread, as we might imagine, is one of the oldest known prepared foods beyond the simplest form of feeding, hunting or gathering.  It's fascinating to consider the process of my bread box mix to an ancient process of extracting roots of plants like cattails and ferns, spread out on a rock, then placed over a fire to form a primitive flatbread. In that case, I wonder of the cooked cattail smell around the small camp fire and flashes of insight that might have arisen as the tasters, certainly admiring the creation, thought that perhaps the cattail bread was a bit bitter, and wondered if there might be a way to sweeten.  My own banana bread turned out quite sweet despite using only moderately ripe bananas (poor planning). It will be moist inside its plastic bag for over a week and the butter I lather over its top will add an enhanced form of sweetener that turns the bread to dessert. I wonder how long it took for the ancients of tropical climes to consider squashed banana as a stabilizer?