M.F.K. Fisher - How to Cook a Wolf: Chapters 8 and 9

 

Chapter 8:  How to Rise Up Like New Bread

Newspapers tell us, with government permission, that wheat costing some five cents a pound is "refined" until it is not only tasteless but almost worthless nutritionally, and that the wheat germ that is thus removed is then sold for at least a dollar and a half and the end put back into the bread, that in loaves it can be sold for a little more than the ordinary price and called "Super-Vitamized" or "Energized" or some such thing.

I admit this paragraph made me laugh out loud.  Just one more example of how the health industry was built.

A brief history of bread   explains how we came to have 'white' loaves instead of whole meal.  Admittedly, growing up I ate store bought white bread.  It was the only bread I ever knew.  Until the day Mama declared that we were dieting and all of a sudden it was all whole wheat.  Perhaps homemade whole wheat bread might be delicious, but I've never yet met a store-bought whole wheat worth its purchase price.  

Fisher herself prefers a nutty wheat loaf, or a dark, rich Rye, etc.   When she lived overseas, she lamented she was unable to find 'good' bread.  In the large city where she was living at time of authoring the book, she could buy from delis and foreign groceries.

All that said, she opens the recipes with a recipe for White Bread as are the other two bread recipes.  Meh.

I've nothing against homemade white bread at all.  In fact, I make white bread myself.  I'm just a little disappointed that Fisher didn't make her own whole wheat.  That all said, she believes in bread making in a big way.  Four or so loaves at a time. Lana mentions her mom making 6 loaves or more each week.  I make one.  Just one for the two of us and now and then when we've had children here, I'll make a second loaf.   That's what works for us.  

Back to Fisher:  one of the first things she mentions is the 'smell' of freshly baked bread.  Subway makes loads of money year all based on the fact that you can smell the bread for the subs baking.  Bread has a lovely aroma.  I'd heard this for year.  From my great grandmothers, my grandmothers, my late father-in-law.  They all grew up with homemade bread and to a person they all remembered fondly the aroma of fresh baking.  Mr. Harry always spoke with great fondness of coming home and being handed an end piece of a fresh loaf spread with butter.  

It's one of the things John is most apt to mention each week when our own bread is baking.  And yes, I use the dreaded, devoid of minerals and vitamins, store bought all-purpose flour.  And still the bread smells wonderful.  

Two brief things before I move on to the next chapter.  If you are substituting whole wheat flour, you will want to increase the liquid called for in the recipe by at least 2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup for every cup of wheat flour being used.  Slow mixing is best in using whole grains to make bread, as well as a slow rise.  Conversely, you can decrease the amount of flour.   Since most recipes call for a minimal and include a maximal amount you can start with the minimum amount.    Personally, I like the added liquid method.  

Lana has pointed out many times that when you first begin bread making it often isn't a success because the yeast in the atmosphere in the house hasn't been established.  I can attest that after years of making bread, I seldom have a failure unless I've not been paying attention and missed something.  

If at first you don't succeed in making your own bread, then try, try again, as the old rhyme tells us.  I promise you, it's worth it.  Once you find the recipe that pleases you or your family, you'll resist store bought bread even when it's the most convenient.

You can bake a loaf in an hour from mixing through baking.  Artisan loaves they are called, and they are tasty.  My favorite recipe takes about two hours from mixing to baking.  Once you master bread, you will find yourself making so much more.  Coffee cakes, sweet rolls, bagels, pizza dough, breadsticks...There's no end.

Chapter 9: How to Be Cheerful Though Starving

Let me say first and foremost that I have never been starving.  Nor deeply hungry.  Yes, I have fasted and yes, I do know the hunger that makes one happy to eat, to have an appetite and appreciate what is set before them.  In my childhood, it was Granny's habit to work in the morning at good hard labor of all sorts.  And when we were with her, we labored right alongside.  It was not a bad principle to teach a child and I wish now I'd done the same with mine, but I digress.

At about 11:30 a.m., without a watch to know for sure, but almost always precisely at that time, Granny would lift her head and hands from her labors and say "Gracious!  I'm so hungry I could eat rock soup!"  And we were hungry, too and I confess that rock soup sounded pretty darned good at that moment.  Never mind that 'rock soup' in Granny's home usually manifested itself as a sandwich, quite possibly as a Garden Salad sandwich (no meat just lots of vegetables from the garden on bread).  

Fisher reminisces about a friend named Sue who was thin to the point of painfully thin, but who loved to entertain.  She recalls that Sue foraged and possibly, maybe scavenged for food which she cooked and served to others.  She used what she had but she understood how to combine herbs and weeds (if you will).  I mentioned in an earlier post my grandmother's poke salad which is a scavenged plant that can be poisonous and has a tedious amount of cooking, draining, squeezing, boiling, draining, etc. in order to make it edible.   And of the bit of foraging my great-grandmother and granny taught me to do.

But the person Fisher mentions, and many others in war-torn Europe during the second World War did know hunger and knew what it was to feast, albeit on nothing much and a lot of water...and they rejoiced in the acquirement, the cookery and the sharing of food with another.  

Did you know the word from companion is derived from the Latin words meaning 'with bread'?  

Essentially this chapter is about eating and cooking, whether alone or in a group and the ability of some to, as a friend of mine once fondly said as we sat replete about the living room after a meal, " You take as near nothing as I've ever seen and make it into something."  I considered it a high compliment in those tight days when the grocery bill for our household was a mere $30 a week (on good weeks and sometimes less) and we were feeding seven or twelve every night.  I consider it a high compliment now, in these days when grocery costs are rising, I feel compelled to store food, and my budget is 3 times higher for two than it was back in those days.

The chapter doesn't mention wasted food.  Fisher wrote with knowledge of a time and place in which waste would have been a crime.  You had what you had, and you used it, period.  That's really the essence of the whole book, eating well on a budget regardless of whether the budget is there or non-existent.  But let me just say, that if I have any regrets from my past, one of them will always be that I wasted food back then, in a way that I would now look back upon with great horror.

Here I will shamelessly plug another author's work.  Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal changed my life in a good way.  Until I read her book, I was unaware of the most common methods of food waste.  I'd already worked hard to eliminate the obvious ways to waste food (scrapping leftovers, not keeping up with how produce is aging, poor sanitation methods, etc.).  It was through Adler that taught me one could and should be eating all of the broccoli not just those precious green florets at the top of the plant, that cores and peels of apples might be used to make jelly but could also produce homemade vinegar (a lovely thing to make and store on your shelf), that the green tops of strawberries were edible, etc., etc.

Back to Fisher's point of view though, it's all lost if (a) one doesn't do those things with grace and calmness and (b) one keeps it all to oneself when others are just as hungry for food and the companionship that company offers.

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