At times like these, I could sure use a loaf of my grandmother’s bread

Amid the perpetual anxiousness and uncertainty of the pandemic, I want to go back to the safest place I know: my grandmother’s kitchen. I know I will find bread there.

Not just any bread, but the most delicious bread I have ever known. She baked on a daily basis when I was a kid and the whole experience — the smell, the warmth, the feeling of utter contentment — is hard-wired into my brain.

She would slice the end piece off while it was still warm and sprinkle it with a little brown sugar.

I can’t go back, of course. My grandmother has long since passed and even the kitchen and the house are gone.

But in these troubled times, I’ve found a very simple recipe for feeling better, one that features just a few simple ingredients.

They say bread is the staff of life and while it certainly fills my belly, in these pandemic times it’s also doing a pretty good job of filling my soul.

Of course, I didn’t start baking because of my grandmother. I started baking because I’m cheap.

A few years ago, my wife started bringing home artisan sourdough from a new bakery in a nearby strip mall (nothing is quaint in suburbia). It was ridiculously delicious. It was also $8 a loaf.

I wanted the good bread but not at that price tag so I spent hours researching recipes, sourcing flours and pondering the wondrous, maddening properties of yeast in all its forms.

I watched a zillion YouTube videos and I bought a few key tools, including a scale, a scraper and a cast iron Dutch oven — on clearance!

Here’s what I figured out: despite the fact that humanity has been doing it for thousands of years — and mostly in conditions far less ideal than my suburban kitchen — producing something truly delectable (or even edible) can be a challenge.

That said, I gradually went from making dough bricks (which were as tasty as they sound) to something akin to delicious bread. It wasn’t $8 calibre but turning a few ingredients into something wonderful felt like sorcery of the very best kind.

After a while, however, I stopped. One of the other key elements, beyond the actual ingredients, is time and that always seemed in short supply. Then the pandemic came along and time was the one commodity I had a ton of. Flour on the other hand ...

It seems like I’m not the only one who has rediscovered an appreciation for the baking arts. In the early days of the social-distancing measures and dumb hoarding, flour was temporarily hard to find. I wonder if people are storing it with all their toilet paper.

Baking my own bread takes me right back to my grandmother’s tiny kitchen. In addition to filling idle time and providing a cheap and easy source of nourishment, making bread is a reminder of happier, simpler times.

For all the chaos, some of the easiest and most important things remain reassuringly the same. Drew Edwards is more than happy to share his bread recipe. Email him at drew@drewedwards.ca.