Diane saw the book review of Breadsong in BookPage and then Diane and I watched the feature on CBS Saturday Morning about Breadsong and the story behind it the next day. Kitty Tait was suffering from depression. Her father, Al Tait, left his job to take care of her. Kitty then discovered the joy of baking bread and her father encouraged her to consider becoming a baker. Check out the video below.
The result of all this baking is both a book–Breadsong–and a store that sells the bread that Kitty Tait bakes. Breadsong tells Kitty and Al’s story and then includes delicious recipes for all sorts of bread and tasty baked treats. We found this story inspiring and the bread…wonderful! Are you a fan of baking your own bread? GRADE: A
I have never baked bread. Made banana bread from a box. But that is the closest I have ever done to baking bread.
Steve, my mother taught me how to bake bread. Diane loves bread and bakes several different varieties like banana bread and zucchini bread. Patrick showed us how to bake Japanese bread–delicious!
Yes!
Of course the main work is done by my wife, I just help with weighing the material and also have to put the flour through a special sieve and later clean up the machinery …
In Hungary you could only get white bread which is as horrible to me as the English or American but now there’s a large variation of bread with rye and different seeds and nuts – Sesam, sunflower, pumpkin seeds and so on. So baking yourself is only necessary if you want something really special like dark rye bread German style with lots of seeds. The best and most expensive of course are roasted pumpkin seeds – we also use pumpkin seed oil to give a salad this special aroma.
A bit OT:
Of course German bread is of much higher variety – especially the dark ones up to Pumpernickel which is black and which I bring sometimes from Germany.
My wife’s grandnephew (is that the correct word?) who lives in Nashville visited us and asked where he might find Pumpernickel here – sorry not much of a chance.
But at least I gave him some green pepper corns I bought in Germany as a present because he also likes this stuff.
You can get better artisinal breads than one easily could in the ’70s in the US, and decent ryes and pumpernickels even from a few of the mass-marketers…but the usual run of mass-market (even) multi-grain breads are rather sweet. While even as a child, I wouldn’t eat the likes of WonderBread happily. Nasty stuff.
My parents, perhaps due to deprivation as children, always preferred white bread…but, they, too, would draw a line at WonderBread.
Wolf, for some reason I never became a fan of dark bread. But, I do love oat bread, rye bread, and sour dough bread.
The last time I baked bread was never. I do love to eat it, though.
The last time I baked bread was never. I do love to eat it, though.
Great story. Now I want some fresh baked bread.
Jeff, it takes a little time to make bread. Frequently, there are raising cycles involved. But, the result rewards the effort! Diane loves warm bread!
I have used Alice’s bread machine several times, as did she, and neither of us were ever too satisfied with the result, so she gave it away some years ago. Some better result with a banana bread from scratch via recipe, but haven’t done that in decades (it’s been decades since the bread machine, for that matter…wow).
Also, each batch of bread machine product cost probably three or more time what a loaf of artisinal bread would, purchased at any sort of store.
Todd, same here. I had a bread machine that made pretty good bread. I also used it to make pizza dough. But, when it broke I didn’t replace it.
Any report on CBS SATURDAY MORNING that isn’t conducted by Michelle Martin or perhaps Jericka Duncan is an opportunity wasted.
Good to be able to take the time to help one’s daughter with her depression. Far less likely, I suspect, in the Land of the Expensive.
Todd, depression strikes young people with high frequency today. Fortunately Kitty had the support she needed.
Or, would you believe, Michelle Miller.
Todd, Diane and I are big fans of Michelle Miller. Jericka Duncan used to be a local CBS affiliate reporter in Buffalo before she made it to the Big Time!
Indeed…for CBS a year or so back, she was covering the death of someone who came out of northern NY she had first covered as a cub tv reporter, and they broke out the Baby Duncan archive tape.
Yes! I’ve been baking bread off-and-on since the mid-1980s. At one time, I had scores of bread-baking books…and I still have some. In the early days of the pandemic, Maggie Mason (who comments here from time-to-time) sent me some yeast when I couldn’t find any on the shelves in our local grocery stores. My daughter Victoria and I then made Martha Stewart’s basic bread recipe multiple times—it uses honey and has a slightly sweet taste and was so, so good. And the smell of freshly-baked bread? Divine! The downside is that now that I have to carefully monitor my A1C, breads of any type are on the restricted & very occasional list.
Deb, like you I have to be careful about my bread intake or my glucose number goes through the roof. But, in small quantities and on infrequent occasions, bread can bring plenty of delight! You’re absolutely right about the smell of freshly-baked bread!
While I enjoy cooking, especially baking, I’ve yet to make bread. My local co-op just down the street has its own bakery and they make a surprisingly good baguette and Avalon Bakery farther down the road in Detroit makes a really tasty “farmhouse” bread so I’ve been content to give them both my business. Alas, I have no access to any of the dark breads Wolf wrote about but I’d love to try them.
My mom hated cooking and we were a hardcore Hamburger Helper family so I grew up on way too much processed food including, yes, Wonder Bread. When I was in third and fourth grade and started packing my own school lunches I would actually trim the edges off slices of Wonder Bread, slather them with margarine (we never had butter) and roll them into tiny balls with which I would fill a Ziploc bag. I remember when “whole wheat” bread hit the mainstream around 1970 and mom started buying factory-square loaves of something that was brown and every bit as spongy as Wonder Bread thinking it would be healthier for us.
That was middle America in the sixties and seventies and I’m not sure things are much better now. I completely changed my diet after leaving for college and eat as little processed food as possible and even gave up meat a few years ago.
I can imagine how working in a bakery (or doing any kind of hands-on work) would be rewarding, these days more than ever, although I don’t deal well with heat so that was never an option for me. It’s always nice to hear of people who stumble into these careers. This country used to have so many jobs like that.
Byron, I suspect most of the people who visit this blog have changed their diet over the years. Like you, I cut down on my meat intake and eat a lot more fruits and vegetables. Most breads are NOT low-carb so I have to be careful in portion control when it comes to that. Diane mostly bakes bread in the Fall and Winter when the oven heat helps to keep our house warm. During the Spring and Summer when the temperatures rise, we frequent the excellent bakeries in our area.
For a brief period in my life I was a devotee of the Stillmeadow Cook books and I did quite a lot of bread baking. And then better bread became available (like at Avalon and Zingerman’s) and I decided my time was better spent in other pursuits. But in the seventies and eighties good bread was hard to come by in Detroit. Growing up in Philly we ate Freihoffer bread. Not sure how close to Wonder Bread that was, but not all that different, I think.
Patti, Diane, Katie, and Patrick love to bake so fresh baked bread shows up with just about every visit. I “baked” a lot of bread when I had the bread machine. But, when I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, I found I had to limit my bread (and other high-carb food) consumption.
Frieihoffer by the ’90s was marketing one of the better mass-market multigrain breads, then Something Happened, and they disappeared from the shelves. It was a bit sweet, but had good flavor and fiber otherwise. These days, I will settle in a pinch for Arnold or Pepperidge Farm.
Freihofer died for our misspelling sins. Easy jokes at the ready:
Does Entenmann’s own Freihofer’s?
Freihofer’s is owned by Bimbo Bakeries USA, which oversees multiple iconic brands, including Entenmann’s, Thomas’, Sara Lee, Boboli and Arnold breads.
Nov 26, 2019
Patti, Jackie loved Freihoffer’s chocolate chip cookies!
As a kid, I definitely ate Wonder Bread as well as other unhealthy foods – Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, for one. (My brother liked Sugar Smacks, remember them?) As time went on, my mother started cooking and serving more healthy foods. When they moved to California in the mid-’70s they definitely changed their eating habits for the better.
My Dad ate Sugar Smacks every day and lived to 96.
The discussion reminded me of a “funny” story.
Two years ago Subway’s went to court in Ireland.
They wanted the lower rate of VAT (value added tax, sales tax) for their sandwiches because bread is a basic food but the Court said:
No!
Your bread contains way too much sugar (like so many US products …) and it can’t be called bread, it belongs to the class of sweets – where the tax is higher …
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/01/irish-court-rules-subway-bread-is-not-bread
Wolf, some “experts” have suggested taxing sugary colas and candy at higher rates to reduce their consumption leading to better health.
George, many European countries have already introduced this “sugar tax” for drinks – the United Kingdom eg after docs told Boris Johnson that he and other obese people were likely to die earlier.
https://www.obesityevidencehub.org.au/collections/prevention/countries-that-have-implemented-taxes-on-sugar-sweetened-beverages-ssbs
Others like Germany are thinking about it.
But generally all products, even Coca Cola etc contain much less sugar (and almost no HFCS) in Europe!