MENNONITE LOVE

The Background.

 

Growing up, my babysitter was a Mennonite pastor's wife who lived across the street. "Aunt Martha" taught me all sorts of things about life, love, and spirituality. She also taught me lessons about food. The first lesson I learned  was "waste not, want not" (otherwise known as "overeat or feel guilty about it" or "overeat AND feel guilty about it").

Every morning Aunt Martha would cross the street to my house to be there when I woke up, walk me to school, and greet when I walked back to her house after school. Often the smell of freshly baked bread met me at the door before she did. She would cut off a steaming hunk of bread, slather it with butter, and serve it to me on an insignificant napkin with pale flowers at the kitchen table. The bread was rich and luxurious, making the napkin look embarrassingly humble to hold such a gift.

The smell of homemade bread will always feel like 7 years old to me.

Aunt Martha was a master baker, as are all the Mennonite Pastor's wives I know. Her bread was velvety smooth inside, the crust was perfectly golden, and the heat from the bread somehow managed to warm not only my hands, but also my heart. I realize that I am forcefully treading in clichés, yet I cannot find a way to otherwise express homemade bread. I will leave that to poet Sally Croft.

This is the second lesson that Aunt Martha taught me: there is little that expresses love more unselfishly than homemade bread. Bread takes patience. It takes diligence. It takes careful planning and timing. The time put into bread is worth far more than the cost of the ingredients. No one bakes bread for an enemy; it takes too long.

The Story.

I share the recipe that I used for this bread below, but the recipe is far more precious if you know the story of how I acquired it. Aunt Martha babysat me from the time I was 4 months old until I was 8. I spent a lot of time with Aunt Martha and Uncle Roy, and through the years she would contact me to let me know that she had found a recoding of me singing at age 4, or a picture of me in the Raggedy Ann Halloween costume she made me. Although we grew apart as I grew more self-involved, I did rekinkle our relationship while I was in college. 


Unannounced, I would stop by her house, knock on the side door, and say a brief hello when I was in town for holidays. She and Uncle Roy would make a lot of fuss about my being in college and about how their "little Elizabeth" was growing up to be so proper. Their pride would swell so much that I could feel their hearts take up more space in the room.

I didn't think that anyone was home the last time that I stopped by the Mennonite house I grew up in. I knocked, then waited a few minutes, knowing that they were slow to move their aging limbs. Just as I turned to leave,  Aunt Martha opened the door, letting the familiar  smell of whole wheat bread greet me.

"Elizabeth! Oh what a surprise! Do come in" she gushed, then scampered off in the way aging women do. "Roy! Look who has come!" she said then cleared the kitchen table of the two letters that had been lying open. She carefully placed each letter inside of an envelope, nestled each in a separate shoe box, then slid the boxes under the sofa.

Martha and Roy were long time lovers. I was fortunate to be at their 60th wedding anniversary, and they were married for almost 68 years. When they met, Roy was actually Martha's Youth Pastor;  their relationship was kept quiet because of this (and their significant age difference). When Roy went away to seminary the two wrote love letters to each other every week as they patiently waited for Martha to come of age. Those letters are kept in shoeboxes under their loveseat in the order in which they were written.

Aunt Martha carved off a thick slice of whole wheat bread, placed it on a floral napkin for me and explained. When I knocked on their door, Martha and Roy were reading their daily letters. Every day they each read one letter to each other to keep their love young.

When I visited Aunt Martha a few years ago she told me that Uncle Roy grew unable to read. Daily she read both letters to him.

The Recipe.

This is Aunt Martha's Honey Whole Wheat Bread recipe. In true Mennonite form, one batch makes 4 loaves.

Pre-baked

Mix with mixer:

• 4 cups Warm Water (110 Degrees F/45 Degrees C)
• 2 Tbs Sugar
• 2 Tbs Salt
• 3 Tbs Yeast
• 2 cups Whole Wheat Flour
• 2 cups White Or Unbleached Flour

Let proof for 1 hour

Add:

• ½ cup Honey
• ½ cup Brown Sugar
• 1 cup Oil
• ½ cup Warm Water (110 Degrees F/45 Degrees C)
• 5 cups Whole Wheat Flour
• 3 cups White Or Unbleached Flour

Knead 10 minutes. If using a KitchenAid,  separate the dough in half before adding the whole wheat flour, and then add white flour as needed to dough to make sticky but manageable to handle.

Divide into four balls, forming a spiral loaf out of each. Place each in greased loaf pan, cover with a wet cloth, and place in pan with a bowl of hot water and the oven lamp on.

Let rise until double (30 min to an hour).

Punch down each loaf and form loaf again. Place in greased loaf pan, cover with a wet cloth, and place in pan with a bowl of hot water and the oven lamp on.

Let rise until double (around an hour).

Turn oven on to 400 degrees.

REDUCE temperature to 325 degrees and bake for 30 minutes.

*can sprinkle dough with cinnamon and sugar (and raisins) like cinnamon rolls for cinnamon bread. This is a great way to mix up the four loaves!

** can rub butter on the top of the loaves when they come out of the oven for a butter crust that stays moist and is glossy/pretty.

Butter makes it pretty! 

The Process. 

I proofed the water, yeast, and sugar before adding them to the rest of the initial grouping of ingredients. I also found that the bread rapidly doubled in its rises. This may be due to my extra proofing, or it could be simply due to chemistry; I am too much of a novice to make any assumptions. I ended up having to divide the dough into two "batches" to prevent my poor Kitchenaid from overflowing, and when I did so, I ended up with two very different consistencies of dough (I also ended up with a hot Kitchenaid). Both batches were soft and smooth (as much as whole wheat can be) but one was certainly more dense. I was convinced that I had ruined two loaves from the heavy dough. I was further convinced that only three would be pretty loaves since I am not Mennonite (I only had three loaf pans).

I soldiered on, deciding that no one needed four loaves of plain whole wheat bread, and made two of them cinnamon (one with raisins). All four of them rose beautifully (both times) and even went above and beyond the desirable rise. All of the tops of the loaves cracked from over-rising.

I baked all four loaves at the wrong temperature. The recipe was handwritten and I missed the "turn oven down to 350 degrees" part and baked the first two loaves at 400 degrees for 29 minutes. The aroma wrapped around the hallway and went up the stairway to let me know that it was done...but by then it was too late. Had I been on the same floor I would have known, but  the time that it took for the scent to make it up the stairs made the difference. The second two loaves were baked at 25 minutes and were a prettier shade. Unfortunately all four of them were a bit dry in the crust, which is only fair since I baked them 50 degrees higher than I should have. It was only in typing out the recipe for this blog that I realized that I was supposed to turn the temperature down.

Surprising to me, all four loaves had similar denseness despite the initial discrepancies in the dough.

The middle swirl was pretty in the raisin bread and undetectable in the plain loaves...just how I wanted them to be. There were some gaps between the swirls of cinnamon raisin (see top picture) but the plain loaves had beautiful uniformity throughout.

I didn't have enough bread pans! 

The Future.

I would like to try and revise the recipe to accomodate 2 loaves instead of 4. This would provide one whole wheat loaf and another with the cinnamon raisin swirl. Although our neighbors and the people at church enjoy the handouts, the town of Wooster is small, and I will eventually run out of people to give bread to.

My rising time needs to be reduced. I have indicated the times I would like to try in the recipe above. The original recipe simply stated "let rise until double" which is not descriptive enough for an amateur bread baker like me.

I would butter the tops of all loaves as they come out of the oven. It keeps the crust from hardening over the days while making the loaf more pleasing to the eye.

I have read that more moistness on the bread before rolling it up into the loaf will keep the holes from forming in bread. Thus, I will try placing a bit more water over the cinnamon sugar/raisin mixture. Furthermore, I will put more pressure on loaf roll to try and keep the air pockets out.