What PBS Taught Me About Our Daily Bread

Baking has been on my mind a lot lately, thanks to several holidays. This month I've made Irish soda bread and Pi day apple pie on a whim. I've also been trying my hand at yeast bread. One of my Christmas gifts was Gluten Free Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day, and I spent a couple snow days testing it out.

The good news is, you don't have to knead gluten free bread dough; assembly is like making brownies. The bad news is that title is a lie. It really means "In 5 minutes of active prep time, after you spent 2.5 hours the day before weighing flours and bringing the dough to a slow rise. And then you have to bake it for an hour. So yeah, carve out some time."

After all that weighing, mixing, and waiting, the results have been surprisingly delicious, although not practical for sandwiches. My loaves still aren't perfect, though. The dough is too dense, the rise too low, the crust too tough. I keep thinking about what I should do differently next time. Should I add less water? Does my pie crust need a higher fat content?

My first attempt at artisan bread. 

Still, I think all my experimenting has helped me understand the process better, even if that batch of bagels turned out flat and lumpy. While visiting my in-laws in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, I went back to the old puzzle of king cake. I attempted it several times the year we got engaged, but I never matched the Haydel's cakes the Southern Baron grew up on. This year, though, I took a long look and a light bulb went off. Eureka, it's a brioche! I just have to make a sweet bread dough enriched with eggs.

The same day as my king cake epiphany, we ended up watching the Great British Baking Show while we waited for Downton Abbey to air. I thought I was over baking competition shows - how much drama can you manufacture out of cupcake decoration anyway? But this show was different. The contestants were doing some serious, complicated stuff involving lots of rising time.

I ended up glued to the screen in suspense, hoping each person would have long enough to proof their dough AND bake it completely. Will the doughnuts puff up enough? Will the layered swirls of the Croatian coffeecake maintain their integrity? Will the fruit bread be raw in the center? (Spoiler alert: it was.) Even though the bakers had the luxury of a personal Kitchen Aid mixer plus a fancy proofing drawer (which I covet), their work was still a delicate balance of math and luck. If they didn't plan out everything perfectly, the results would be messy.

You have to assemble your flours before you make the dough.  

All this baked good suspense made me think about how we pray to God for "our daily bread." It sounds like the most basic, bland food. Sure, bread and milk are what everyone runs to get in a snow storm, but they aren't super exciting. But the actual process of making bread is a complicated scientific reaction.  If any factor goes wrong, it won't work. A round, fluffy loaf is actually kind of a miracle. It's appropriate that the Passover "bread of haste" is bread that doesn't bother to be leavened.

Daily life can feel like a maddening balance too. My routine is a pile of deadlines dependent on each other. I must leave the house no later than 7:32 am, or I'll miss the train. If I don't put my phone in airplane mode while I'm underground on the subway, the battery will drain to nothing. A letter template must be formatted perfectly, or the 250 letters I'm mailing will look terrible. 

Just as the Father wants to give us the food we need to live, we can also ask Him to give us success in our daily tasks so that life rises into a cohesive whole. The unleavened bread of Passover and the Eucharist symbolizes taking time away from the rat race demands of the everyday. We put aside complicated dough proofing so we can focus on heavenly things instead. 

Forming Daily Prayer Habits

This month's Bright Maidens blog topic is daily devotions. It's perfect timing because I'm in the middle of learning a new one. My in-laws gave us a copy of Shorter Christian Prayer for Christmas, so we're trying to use it together every day.

Praying the Liturgy of the Hours together is something we've talked about doing for a long time. It seems like a good fit for us. I usually prefer psalms to the rosary. The Southern Baron has to make his own schedule while he's dissertating, so he likes the automatic structure of marking morning, evening, and night. Plus the vintage 1988 illustrations take us back to our childhood. Doesn't that old school CCD textbook vibe make you feel cozy and nostalgic?

It's easier said than done, though. There are a lot of different parts of the script to juggle. The opening hymn usually becomes a round of "let's sing along with a YouTube video." And even though this was my idea in the first place, once the novelty wore off I started to balk. Sometimes when my husband reaches for the little book, I feel like whining "Do I hafta??" 

I'm glad the Southern Baron is more dedicated than I. He reminds me that if we stick with it, evening prayer after dinner will  become part of our routine.  Even if I'm reluctant sometimes, I know that talking to God is better than running on empty. Reciting alternate verses of psalms and canticles is a collaboration, and gives us a chance to work as a team. We hope that one day our kids will be singing the Marian antiphons along with us. And if they whine "Do I hafta?" I'll encourage them that it gets easier once you power through the doldrums. 

7 Christmas Season Quick Takes

Happy New Year! And Merry Christmas too - if you want to get super traditional about it the Christmas season doesn't end until Candlemas on February 2. So don't feel bad if you don't get around to taking the tree down for a couple weeks. 

1. I've mentioned before how Christmas and I sometimes don't get along. Repetitive sappy music makes me stabby, and I'm weary of drumming up outrage for the annual  tradition of freaking out over the content of public decorations.
   Little did I know Christmas is my husband's favorite holiday. He's listened to annual my holiday rants without a peep, focusing on the Incarnation and patiently suggesting a few new festive activities each year. And it worked! As we spent our first December together, I found myself actually looking forward to firing up our Advent playlist and seeing all the decorations in the city.
   
2. That being said, Christmas caught us a little off guard. Oh shoot, we don't own stockings. Or lights. Don't you need a stand for a live tree? I really should have started gift shopping earlier. Fortunately buying a few strands of lights and a 3 foot artificial tree was enough to make our apartment look festive. Then my best friend surprised me with personalized stockings from Etsy!






Working in the development world means the December end-of-year fundraising push is about as busy as the finals season that stands between college students and Christmas break. I have new empathy for the employees of different charities who have filled my email account and mail box with their own donation appeals. Still, I am grateful that I work with a great team of people.  Especially when we take breaks by discussing how Queen Victoria basically invented the modern Christmas.

Even though we held back on full-out Christmas until Gaudete Sunday, I was very grateful for the onslaught of decorations in New York City that started even before Thanksgiving. Leaving work in the dark and cold is always depressing, so it was wonderful to have colorful lights greeting me everywhere. Even ugly old Penn Station. I really liked my friend Kelly's insightful post about how early festivity shouldn't trouble us too much - even the Blessed Mother celebrated Jesus' arrival before He was actually born! 

Outside the Stock Exchange after some frantic gift shopping at the Wall Street TJ Maxx
Christmas shopping crowds in the city were another story. While we didn't try to cram into Rockefeller Center for the tree lighting, we ended up tangled in the road closures and packed sidewalks anyway. But we survived, and it was worth it to attend a young adult mass at St. Patrick's celebrated by Cardinal Dolan himself! Seeing New York's archbishop in person has been on my bucket list for a  long time, and his down-to-earth preaching about St. Augustine did not disappoint.

Fun fact: my old Nicest Boss in the World in St. Louis was once a seminary classmate with "Tim." (Nicest Boss went on to be a happily married social worker instead of a priest.) I was pleased to note that you can still detect a hint of the STL in the Cardinal Archbishop's accent - his "Lord" sounds a little like "Laaard." Southern Baron noted Dolan's active personality - at one point he was actually fidgeting with his pectoral cross. Adorbs.



This was my first Christmas I haven't spent with my parents and siblings, but it was still joyful in my little apartment with only two people unwrapping gifts. The Southern Baron and I enjoyed actually celebrating traditions like Midnight Mass together. We also continued older ones, like buying Christmas cards on sale from museum gift shops.


The parish down the street on Christmas Day
For now, 2014 looks less eventful than last year, and that is fine with me. Starting a new job, moving to a new state, planning a wedding, and starting married life all in 6 months was an exhausting whirlwind. My goal this year is to get the most out of where I am right now, before the next big transition hits.
Our resolution as a couple is to pray together more - grace before meals doesn't count too much. Right now we're figuring out how to use the copy of Shorter Christian Prayer we got for Christmas. The Magnificat Magazine training wheels have been removed, and it's confusing.

Visit Jen Fulweiler at Conversion Diary for more quick takes!