Our Daily Bread

We bake bread several times a week here.  When the girls were little, we only made bread once a week.  But now with four active, growing children, we can polish off a loaf every day – sometimes in just one meal.  Thankfully, it is an activity I have always enjoyed – especially when the kids help.  (One day, we hope to get a wood-fired bread oven built in the backyard that would be available for the community to use when we fire it up once a week.  But for now, we are content to warm the house on a chilly night by baking in the kitchen.)

Recently, I got together with some moms from our homeschool co-op, and a guest came to share her orange-glazed sticky bun recipe with us.  She also shared a beautiful poem
(found in an old cookbook) about the artistry and importance of the simple act of baking bread, and I want to share it with you:

Our Daily Bread by Grace Noll

An ancient rite, as old as life is old:

A woman baking bread above a flame

Its value is far greater than pure gold,

it is ageless, timeless, and the simple name

Of bread is wholesome as the summer sun

That has lit and warmed the fields that men might eat;

It is as clean as are the winds that run

Their light-food way across the waving wheat.

A loaf is only half a loaf unless

We share it, and unless we say

Our grace above it, asking God to bless

That bread that He has given day by day

O women, handle flour as you should!

It is a thing God-given, priceless, good.