Readers roll with memories of homemade bread

Published 12:01 am Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Suffering through a couple of weeks on a no-carbohydrate diet, I was not allowed to eat any bread.

No toast, English muffins, peanut butter sammies or hamburger buns.

For a bread gal, it was agony.

Easing into a less-restricted low-carb diet, I bought grocery store breads with l

ow carbs. Mostly they tasted like a combination of baked cardboard and sawdust.

I ended up buying a bread maker and bought some weird-sounding ingredients that combined to form barely palatable loaves. But my cravings for real bread never ceased.

My dreams centered on homemade bread my Grandma Doris Brayton made at her home on Camano Island. Lucky grandchildren who spent the night got hot buttered toast she sliced herself for breakfast.

And her dinner rolls.

Oh, her dinner rolls.

At the height of my recent bread passion, I asked some of folks to share their own memories.

Michael Tanner, who lives on Camano Island, also had a bread-baking grandmother.

“I remember the crust being the best part,” Tanner said. “It was to die for. I also remember that it was a huge production when she baked and it seemed like there was flour from one end of the kitchen to the other. Naturally, she hand kneaded the dough and that seemed to take forever. I have very fond memories of all of that.”

Vicki and Michael Tanner run a bed and breakfast at their home in Sturgis, S.D., during the summer motorcycle rally.

“We have a bread machine which is in our house at Sturgis. We provide a continental breakfast every morning which includes fresh-baked bread from the machine. Everyone knows that baking bread in a machine is absolutely no mess and no fuss. The mildly sad thing is, I must say, that bread is every bit as good as grandma’s — and she had to slave away to make it.”

He adds raisins to make it almost like a breakfast pastry, Michael Tanner said.

Tanner also said his grandmother made fried mush, wilted lettuce and succotash.

Darla Reese, who lives in Granite Falls, remembers rolls.

“My great-grandmother made excellent homemade rolls that I looked forward to at every Thanksgiving,” Reese said. “They were very buttery and broke into three sections, which made it easy to put your butter or jelly on each piece.”

Julie DeNoma, who lives in Edmonds, said her grandma made the best homemade bread and dinner rolls ever.

“I can still smell her house in Pinehurst, where everything was made from scratch,” DeNoma said. “She was born in Sweden. Her Swedish meatballs were amazing, and her Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were the best.”

When DeNoma asked for recipes, her grandmother would say the information was stored in her head.

“She made huge pots of coffee, always with a raw egg placed in with the coffee grounds, in the percolator.”

When DeNoma tried to make homemade bread, she said it was a disaster. She bought her daughter a bread machine and enjoyed those loaves.

“I was never a great cook,” she said. “When the kids left home, I pretty much gave up cooking for one. I can make great peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cereal with a banana.”

Fred Cruger of Granite Falls said his mother grew up in Sweden, north of the Arctic Circle, where bread making was apparently a skill to be mastered by all young women.

The flavor of her bread was not unlike that of “Hawaiian Bread” that we can buy, he said.

“I have vivid recollections of her using scissors to snip into the top of the loaf before baking,” Cruger said. “She would snip a narrow wedge-shaped piece and lay its narrow end to one side, then another, and another, laying them to alternate sides to ‘braid’ the top of the loaf. As a young child, that became a task I loved to do myself.”

When her older sister would visit from Sweden, Cruger said, she would bake endlessly, and his dad, sister and Cruger would gobble up warm bread as it came from the oven, slathered with butter.

“She remarked to my mom, ‘I’ve never seen people eat like this. They don’t let it cool before they’ve consumed it. I can’t stop baking and take a rest.’ “

Gee, Cruger said, we thought we were showing true appreciation for someone skilled in the art.

Halden Toy, who lives in Marysville, said he made bread with his grandma when he was younger.

“She had this machine called a Mill ‘n’ Mix that was absolutely huge,” Toy said. “Every summer that I would visit we would make bread together. Then sometimes after the bread was made we would have a slice with jam and tell jokes and funny stories.”

He said he remembers those as wonderful times.

“To me it seems that something as simple, ancient and basic as bread can bring people together for some reason.”

Kevin Zobrist of Everett said his grandma made Christmas Bread, a cross between a loaf of bread and a fruitcake.

“I loved it,” he said. “And it was especially good toasted.”

What he loved even more were her rolls.

“She made orange rolls, and the best part was the frosting, which was butter, sugar, and orange juice concentrate. She would always let me help in the process, and that usually involved a lot of tasting of the frosting.”

My dad, Bill Brayton, 91, who lives on Camano Island, shares my memories of his mother’s bread, right down to the preparation.

“She had a favorite yellow mixing bowl that stayed in our kitchen most of the time with bread dough rising and covered with a dish towel,” Dad said. “And the most delicious smells came from the oven at baking time. Nothing could beat the fun when the bread came out of the oven hot and aromatic.”

He said as kids, they took turns getting to cut into the fresh loaves and slathering the heels with butter.

“A loaf of bread was the center-piece on our meal table,” Dad said. “So even today, bread is a staple for my diet.”

I know, Dad, I know.

Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451; oharran@heraldnet.com.