I think of my aunt, low on funds, making many a dinner of toast and scrambled eggs for her five hungry children, who thought it a banquet. And I think of Grandma with her wrists cracking as she kneaded the dough. When the bread came from the oven she would bless it by dunking her hand into a glass of water and rubbing a cross onto the top of each loaf. When the last loaf was blessed she would drink the water - a ritual I understood without ever having to ask. Making bread is a romantic experience, a story of creation.
Individual ingredients lie dormant until they are brought to life by the process.
The dough, filled with promise, has never failed me. Never have I not loved it's feel in my hands, - warm and responsive, taking part of me with it into the magic. Believe as I believe, and the experience will engage you in something quite mystical. It is all of this that went into Breads by Barbara, a three-year enterprise that ended in great success. There was much too much work for me to do by myself when the girls grew up and out of the house, but now that you have my recipes perhaps you can pick up where I left off.