Life happens in kneading

It has been a pretty good day today.  I got up early when the house was quiet and my guy still sleeping and padded into the kitchen. I woke with thoughts of fresh bread in my mind.  I have always enjoyed making bread and so, this morning, I made some herb and onion bread. 

I am fascinated with bread.  Sifting the dry ingredients, I watch the texture of the flour change, becoming gradually softer, rounder.  Smelling the yeast sponge begin to expand reminds me of change.  Mixing it together, I marvel at how the dry and the wet at first clump, grab and finally stick.  Rolling it onto the counter in the flour dust is where the magic begins.  If you have never made bread from scratch before, you must at least once do so.  Life happens in kneading.  I know it sounds dramatic but, honestly, there is nothing in this world like the feeling of bread dough under your hands, moving from sticky and suddenly becoming elastic.  The dough warms and you can feel it start to breathe.  With each knead, your body rocks with the thrust and your hands cup this new feeling.  You inhale as your rock back and exhale as you push the knead through the dough.  It warms further under your hands and becomes something altogether different.  You can almost feel the moment when the loaf is born under your hands and you know intuitively that you are finished.  I love setting it in a warm bowl to rise, the smell of the yeast diffusing through the kitchen.  By the time my guy woke this morning, my bread had been kneaded twice and was ready for the oven.  It rose and baked as we sat talking, sipping coffee.

Now that I am married, I think bread is starting to mean something else to me.  In making it, I realize that it teaches me, through my hands, that I can add to our life, that I can shape our future, that I can create something entirely new from seemingly unrelated ingredients, create something that will sustain and support us. It is a determined act to bake bread when it is easily and more cheaply found at the grocery store but I believe it is this same determined action to create from scratch something new which will be the same impulse I need to make my marriage grow.