We Bake Bread ~ Catherine de Hueck Doherty

Another lovely description by Catherine de Hueck Doherty of life as a child in Russia. It stirs something deep within for a woman…this baking of bread.

By Catherine de Hueck Doherty, My Russian Yesterdays, Madonna House Publications

We Bake Bread

It was Friday, and Friday was always a very special day in our house and in those of our neighbors, for it was “bread-setting day.”

The big kitchen was immaculate. The bread table and the worktable were scrubbed to a dazzling white; and the big table at which the help ate was covered with a tablecloth, finely embroidered in cross-stitch and of many vivid hues. The big wood-burning range was warm, and the cat and her kittens were curled up as close to it as they could get.

The vigil light before the big ikon flickered, and its flicker was reflected in, it seemed to me, a hundred shining copper pans which hung in orderly rows on the whitewashed walls and made pools of light, often too bright to look at long.

The shelves that ran along the walls were filled with beautifully wrought jars and jugs. Local craftsmen made them out of special clay, decorated them with original designs, and baked them in old-fashioned kilns. These kept the strangely blended vegetable dyes for centuries.

I loved the jars both for their beauty and their contents which always amazed me. They seemed to contain an inexhaustible supply of wonderful things—sweet-smelling herbs, strange roots and barks, cookies, spiced sugars and plums, an infinite variety of dried vegetables—in short, a world of secrets to delight any child’s heart. But I was not allowed much time to spend with these jars for my help was needed.

The cook and Mother were bringing out the big, heavy, wooden bread tubs. These were washed but twice a year. Ordinarily they were just wiped with a clean piece of cloth and tightly covered with another until needed again. In each there was always left a lumpy piece of dough the size of a fist. This seemed to me to be part of the tub. But it was really only the “leaven.” 

The flour bins were opened. Rye flour that smelled so good! Whole-wheat flour, ground rough in the local mills, that made such a nourishing wholesome bread! White flour for Sunday and holyday breads! There they all were in big bins, blending with each other. The staff of life that made men work from dawn to dusk. How beautiful they were!

The water was warmed just so, and now was the time to pray. On our knees, on the scrubbed pine floor, we prayed first to the Lord Christ: “O Lord Jesus Christ, Bread of angels, Living Bread unto eternal life, bless this bread, as Thou didst bless the five loaves in the wilderness: that all who eat it with reverence may through it attain the corporal and spiritual health they desire. Who livest and reignest eternally. Amen.”

Then to His Blessed Mother, for wasn’t she the Patroness of the Home, and wasn’t breadmaking the sacramental of the home? So naturally it had to be talked over with her. Her Son’s blessing on the ready bread was essential, but hers was needed too, to get flour and water, salt and sugar together so that there would be a palatable loaf!

Now the tubs themselves were blessed with the sign of the cross, and then the bakers blessed themselves. All was ready to set the dough. Slowly, reverently, flour and water were mixed into a thin batter. The tubs were put on the tile edge of the range, then covered; first with a clean linen cloth, then with old clean blankets.

Another sign of the cross would be made for good rising…and the women would leave the kitchen on tiptoes. The cat and I would stay, both curled up near the warm stove, in the dimness of the cozy shining kitchen. As often as not we would both fall asleep there, the cat for the second time, and I for the first.

Two hours later, Mother and cook would be back to add the rest of the flour and whatever spice, sugar, butter, or eggs had to go into the special dough. Slowly, with a long wooden paddle, they again mixed the whole. Then they began kneading it, their elbows going deep into the dough until the dough would fall off their hands and arms. Then the batch was ready for “sleep.”

Rye bread takes a long time to “rise.” Tomorrow morning it would be ready for the next operation. And tomorrow could never come soon enough for me. Week after week, fascinated, I watched. Somehow, that baking was “home” to me. Always, when bread was made, I felt at home. It was like a ritual, all tied up with God and His cross, and the Blessed Mother.

Now it was tomorrow. When I came downstairs, the baking oven—which in all Russian kitchens formed the back part of every stove—was filled with glowing coals, which soon would be raked out into the stove. The things I saw in those glowing coals! They would fill many a fairy book. Coals have that way with me. They stir my imagination.

Mother and cook were already hard at work on the dough. They had kneaded it again, thrown it about the long pine table, put it once more to rise, but this time on big sheets of tin.

Russians seldom use tins to bake their bread in; they just put big lumps on the sheets and let them spread in round appetizing loaves. They rise a while on these, and then are gently picked up on a flat wooden shovel and thrust, in orderly rows, into the baking oven.  And what a heavenly smell issued from that oven! I can still smell it…and feel all the ecstasy of my childhood.

Hours later, round brown loaves would be placed on the back of the baking oven on a white sheet and covered with blankets for the day.

Saturday evening would bring a supper of milk, cottage cheese, and freshly baked bread with homemade butter. What restaurant could beat that?

And let me tell you about the part bread plays at a wedding! In Russia, the couple just married are met by the father of the bride, carrying a loaf of bread on a wooden platter, and by the mother, carrying salt. These are symbols of the material and spiritual welfare that is wished for them.

The bread typifies material goods, the salt spiritual goods. “For you are the salt of the earth.” Bread plays such a great role in the lives of the Russians! It is to them, indeed, the holy staff of life.

Soldiers’ rations, for instance, include two and a half pounds of bread per meal. It is the meal.

Even now, thousands of miles away from Russia, I often startle friends walking with me—and I certainly puzzle passers-by—because, when I see a piece of bread lying on the street or sidewalk, I pick it up, kiss it, bless myself, and put it on some ledge nearby, away from dirty shoes.

This is an old Russian custom. The Russians revere bread because the Son of Man chose it as His Substance for us.

“Keep yourself at peace and in complete repose, live for Jesus in every moment that you are living, or, better, live as though you have no life in yourself, but allow Jesus to live in you at His leisure; to walk thus, in all circumstances and in all encounters, without fear or worry as is becoming the children of Jesus and Mary; never think of yourself voluntarily; abandon the care of your soul to Jesus alone. Your soul belongs to Him. It is therefore up to Him to take care of it because it is His property. Generally speaking, banish all fear and replace this feeling with love; in all of this, act gently, sweetly, steadily, without haste, without anger. Walk in this fashion in all graciousness, abandonment and complete confidence.”-Fr. Jacques Philippe, Searching For and Maintaining Peace of Heart http://amzn.to/2xr5sFE (afflink)

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