I was asked tonight to do the ritual blessing of the bread in a Zoom Shabbat with a bunch of folks from my trip to Israel a few years back. What an honor, but also, what a terror!!! ZOOM IS NOT MY THING, so it was a challenge. I think I partially got my point across, but the whole point lies here and I think it’s a pretty decent one. As some of y’all finding yourselves heading into shabbat and some of y’all just heading into a long holiday weekend: May we all go into our weekends with kindness and goodness: BLESS THIS BREAD and SHABBAT SHALOM, Y’ALL:
Hi: INTRO INTRO INTRO I’m Sarah Dodge blah blah a baker here in Atlanta Georgia blah blah blah with a company very plainly called “Bread is Good.” And though the name did come into fruition quite lazily, our mission is anything but: Bread is Good believes that everyone should have access to GOOD bread. We firmly believe that Good Bread is Everything, and Good Bread IS Good, and Good Bread is IMPORTANT.
The timing of being asked to do this blessing couldn’t exemplify this truth even more. We’ve all witnessed the straight-up surge in home baking, the impossibility of finding flour, and then the obsession of the who’s who of sourdough baking ha.
And why? Why is it that when faced with a pandemic, when hit with a million bolts of uncertainty, anxiety, potential job loss- why do we find ourselves running to our kitchens, and more specifically why do we find ourselves running to bread.
In my opinion, it’s because in it’s elemental and basic form: Good Bread is THE rudimentary food we need right now. Believed to have come into existence by the Egyptians, grass (or wheat), water, and salt come together to make an entire meal (yes, I have had many a meals of just bread). Bread is rudimentary in it’s ingredients, in its process, and in who it can feed. Bread is everyone’s food, capable of feeding so many while utilizing so few ingredients. Bread feeds the rich, the poor, the hungry, and the satiated (case in point me at a fancy restaurant post nice meal still eating from the bread basket). Bread doesn’t seek to exclude or discriminate. And I think it’s these basic principals of bread that we have all sought to come back to: SIMPLICITY, INCLUSION, and MINIMALISM.
When we get to the heart of what bread in it of itself is: It’s a community, right?
Bread in in of itself is a community of microbes and cultures suited for one another, working together, somewhat dependent upon each other but more so independently trusting and working WITH each other to create, ferment and then bake into a nourishing and life-giving loaf. And so Just as faith does, bread-making requires that we hand over our own perceived sense of control and trust in the variables that nature will provide. What an intriguing thing: Bread- as a community -that helps us build our community- around bread. FULL CIRCLE JUST LIKE FAITH.
So, even though we can’t physically break bread together right now, let’s find ways to celebrate community, find simplicity, and remember those rudimentary things that bread teaches us to be grateful for.