All Sorrows are Less with Bread

"I got a lotta problems with you people, 
and now you're going to hear about it!" 

(Relax... I think we’ll bypass the Airing of Grievances this year, or we’ll be here till Easter!)

It has been a challenging year for most of us in a number of ways. There is no looking back at 2016 without some scarring. It is imperative, then, we find a thing – no matter how seemingly trivial – to hang on to and say, “Ah, but THIS!!! This made it all pale in comparison…”

But a year that insists on throwing death and destruction at you kills the vibe every time you have it within grasp. It’s as if the whole world suddenly started signing Robbie Williams’ “Feel”:

I sit and talk to God

And he just laughs at my plans

We are resilient, though, and refuse to go down without a fight. With mere weeks to close out one of the most monstrous years in memory, a friend sent us an unexpected Festivus gift. It was a bread maker. I never considered a bread maker. But then, Cervantes wrote that "All sorrows are less with bread." Obviously, this gift is the thing to grab and make it the one point of bliss for 2016.

Mom made a few Stromboli, but she doesn’t like working with active yeast. Although I love the idea of making bread, am often annoyed by the inordinately complicated and long process. I am not the baker in the family...

Like Oprah, though, I love bread. 

Oh hush, you know you love bread too! 

We have great bakeries in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge. And the bread display at Trader Joe’s is a thing of fragrant beauty!

source: http://www.ittybittyfoodies.com/

If I’m honest, I do not expect 2017 to be a significant improvement from 2016, and the true beauty of the bread maker is that I’ll be able to maintain our love of bread without having to pay the increasingly ridiculous prices for specialty breads. (Though I also suspect that 2017 will be the year the gym becomes an awfully real thing because between the ice cream machine and the bread maker… OMG, thunder hips! Sure, more to love, but hell on the furniture.)

I think the thing Mom appreciates more than anything is the absence of active yeast and the chance of living the “Feed the bish!” episode from Anthony Bordain’s “Kitchen Confidential” in our own kitchen.

Thank you for keeping us with our irregular contributions here and on Twitter this year. Let’s hope we can share a lot more goodies in the next year! I’m starting one more Pinterest board for recipes I want to try in our bread maker (I’ll let you know how it works out, of course), and you are free to join me in the quest for the perfect loaf/bun/baguette...

If you celebrate, happy holidays! If you do not celebrate, remember that breaking bread with your fellows (whether family, friends, or neighbors) is a celebration of your own humanity. 

In 2017, no matter how hard life and the universe connive, 
please continue to assert your humanity!