Dear Bread Fans,
In this tumult, I’m diving backwards. This is my habit, of course, to look at remnants of the past and try to guess what life was like — or at least what bread and the people who made it were like.
I do this at the Hart Cluett Museum these days, reading up in the archives.1 I also get to think about bread’s many pasts on the local public radio, WAMC, a few times a year during their Food Friday show. This becomes a Flour Hour, and I love taking calls and trying to answer questions.
Friday, I planned to make morning glory muffins. I’ve been making variations of them at Naughter’s, a diner I love, many Monday mornings. But Friday, I woke up at early with the lightning bolt of a thought: I had to make hot cross buns!
Freihofer’s, our local factory bakery, used to make two kinds of hot cross buns, one with a shiny top and one with a cinnamon sugar crust. Both had icing crosses on top. As the family business was bought by national and then international brands, they cut out some favorites — and the hot cross buns with the dark topping are sorely missed.
There are intense laments on social media, like this one:
“Why do you continue to hold the recipe hostage? Whoever made the decision to axe the better version with cinnamon sugar and keep disgusting version with frosting should be fired. A lot of people have memories and traditions attached to food and that fact is irrelevant to the Freihofer company. Shame.”
Hostage is a strong word and shows how much foods mean to people. I’m not the first to try to replicate these beloved buns. I followed a recipe, and brought them to Ray Graf, the host, for him to taste, but the topping was more like strudel than the dark, crispy crust. I wasn’t satisfied.
Why, Ray asked, do you want to figure this out?2
Great question. The government is getting eaten alive. People are having hard times, and very hard times, and our times are going to get worse. What the heck does recreating a food memory do? Does it let us live in another time? Remind us of loved ones? Is it an escape?
These things we share, foods with local ties, live large in our minds. They are like public figures.
The hot cross buns that people miss came into our houses. They sat on our counters. They were ideas we shared, and they are now collective memories. We need these tethers to each other, to our pasts.
This isn’t just nostalgia. Or maybe it is, and what is wrong with that? We need to scrub all negative connotations from that term! Why shouldn’t we feel longing for something that was? Why shouldn’t we love what has been?
Maybe, Ellie3 said when we were thinking about this together, the stories we carry within us are the true things that no one, no government or anyone, can take away from us. They survive us.
So, dear readers, I’ve got two quizzes for you:
1. What food do you miss?
2. What memories will survive you?
Your flour friend,
Amy
Want to dig in with me? I’m leading a free class on Saturday, April 12th, called Reading the Invisible. We’ll be thinking about journaling and looking at diaries and other handwritten things. Register here.
This letter is in conversation with Ellie Markovitch’s post about Pão de Queijo, a beloved Brazilian bread she recreated.
1. What food do I miss? Warm "Zwiebelbrot" fresh from the German bakery -- but guess what: I figured out how to make my own! And even with Sourdough! So now I don't really "miss" it anymore, but it was one of the reasons I fanatically tried so hard to get the sourdough journey of to a success.
2. What memories will survive you? I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that, but if you are referring to a memory about Zwiebelbrot (okay, for those of you that don't speak German: it's Onion bread with a good dose of rye and the onion is fried in a bit of butter and then partially dehydrated before adding it to the dough-- at least that's how I make it), the bus ride home from school with a warm fresh bread in my bag comes to mind. At first, it was only Bine, my best friend in school and I who dug around at the end of the loaf picking off pieces to snack on, but then other kids riding with us wanted to try a piece, too. By the time I got home, half the loaf was gone! Mom was not happy about that one! oops. ;)
Baking bread to me is meditation and an escape from the political insanity that's causing me anxiety! My mind is occupied with the recipe development, bakers' math and percentages--at least for a little while. That, and short hikes in the woods. Enjoy them while we can!
Funny, I rarely eat doughnuts from a bakery these days, but I do miss a couple of bakeries from my younger days. One of these bakeries was in my hometown and their "cream sticks" (filled long johns) were mouth-watering! This bakery has been closed since the late 1960's, yet like me, many in my hometown still remember this bakery fondly. The second bakery was in the college town where my husband and I began married life. I'd go grocery shopping in the neighborhood grocery store, then go next door to buy treats from the bakery there: a cinnamon roll for my husband and an apple fritter for me. Both inexpensive, huge and very good! But the bakery went out of business when the grocery store underwent a big expansion and took over that space.