Sacred Baking

The smell of baking bread blesses every corner of the home, and nothing tastes as good as fresh, home baked bread. Bread and bread making are part of our most ancient rituals. In Athens, people baked round cakes, representing the moon, to honor Artemis. In ancient Assyria and Babylonia, special sacrificial cakes were offered to Ishtar. Bread pans in the shape of Astarte excavated in Israel are evidence that baking was part of ancient sacred ceremonies there as well. Making bread brings us close to a common but profoundly transformational process. We work with the living loaf. We learn quiet secrets as the dough becomes supple under our hands, then grows larger with warmth and time, and is finally served to nourish and delight. Baking bread also gives us the opportunity to create symbols that literally become part of us. We combine simple elements to make the loaf, shape it to reflect what is special about a moment of time, transform it with fire, sacralize it on our altar, bless it in our circle, and then share the bread, joining with the past and teaching those to come. The bread, consecrated on our altars and blessed by the circle, symbolizes the nourishing earth and sanctifies the simple act of sharing food.

(Excerpt from, "Circle Round, Raising Children in Goddess Traditions")

I have always loved baking bread, and I have been doing it since my oldest daughter was a baby. Nearly twenty years now. Wow! I still love it. There is just something about holding the pliable dough and kneading it into something alive and tangible. From such humble ingredients as flour, yeast, sugar and water, I can make something warm and wonderful and nourishing for my family. I have tried a number of recipes over the years and found my current favorite in, of all places, "Laurel's Kitchen" cookbook, the original 1970's edition, found while thrifting last fall. The recipe is so simple and produces the best tasting, whole wheat bread I've ever had. Sophie and I enjoy making bread together now, just as her sisters did when they were young. Mixing the ingredients and rolling out the roll and kneading and punching and forming it into shapes or braiding it, or putting into pans. This evening, Sophie and I made dinner rolls from the recipe and we are going to enjoy them with our dinner tonight and probably with butter and jam at breakfast in the morning.