Bread and Butter

There is nothing on earth that makes a place feel more like a home than the cozy aroma of freshly baked bread. There is something sublimely wholesome about it, like getting breathed on by the Virgin Mary. It is possibly the best example to use when explaining the concept of the German word Gemütlichkeit. An extract from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia describes this concept thusly:

Gemütlichkeit is a German abstract noun whose closest English equivalent is cozinessss. However, rather than basically just describing a place as not too large, well-heated and nicely furnished (cozy room, cozy flat), Gemütlichkeit connotes, much more than coziness, the notion of belonging, social acceptance, cheerfulness, the absence of anything hectic and the spending of quality time in a place as described above. A similar word exists in Dutch as well, gezelligheid. There is also a Danish equivalent (hygge), which basically means the same.

Bread baking is a powerful reminder of how cooking your own food can vastly improve your life. Even a fresh loaf from a European bakery cannot compete with the satisfaction one derives from kneading the living dough, hefting a steaming bread pan out of one's own oven, cutting off a thick slice and slathering it with butter. Its moist chewyness is like walking barefoot on freshly laid sod after a rainstorm. The warmth it exudes is like that of a brown dog who's been dozing in the sun all afternoon. It's a pleasure that can't be bought.

My ex-girlfriend (the German) was a serious advocate of Gemütlichkeit. I credit her with playing a pivital role in my culinary education. As Germans can be she was sometimes quite blunt in her opinions on food and drink. I remember a birthday party we had for me in our backyard. A number of my friends were there including a cheeky South African who I was quite fond of. He liked to tease people and when the lovely young lady brought out the immaculate strawberry cake she had spent hours baking for me he said in condescending tone, "Aw, that's sweet, and so terribly domestic don't you think?" She looked him straight in the eye and said "If I wanted to eat shit I could buy it in a store, but I don't so I cook things myself."

This was actually the first loaf of bread I've ever cooked, excluding a brioche, which to me is more like cake anyway. It is a honey whole wheat loaf. The recipe came from a book I picked up in Denver called More-with-Less Cookbook: suggestions by Mennonites on how to eat better and consume less of the world's limited food resources. The book cites creative enjoyment and quality of product as the main reasons people give for baking bread. To that it adds nutritional and economic advantages. To that I add Gemütlichkeit.