Making bread

For the first time in weeks, I'm sitting here with nothing pressing to do (well, except for making bread for my husband) and I'm relishing the moment.

There's been so many things pending in the past few months that it seems like I've always had something in the back of my mind that had to be completed or accomplished or read or written or sent or received. Not that there aren't things that need to get done anymore, but the bulk of what was up in the air is now settled on firm ground and now it's all a matter of waiting (something I'm not particularly good at, but oh well).

For a few minutes longer, I'm going to sit here and enjoy that feeling of not having to make sure something gets done before I go downstairs, plug in the bread maker (I used to be a purist and kneaded my bread but the bread maker is so much faster), and have a warm and nice-smelling loaf of bread ready in a hour.

My husband is a bread-ophile so there's always bread in the house, whether made by me or store bought. Personally, there's no bread I love more than a piece of the crusty steaming Pan de Pepín baguette I buy every time I visit Puerto Rico. I know my own bread isn't even remotely that good, but it will do.

I really like making bread (even if I don't get to knead it) because there's something primordial, primeval and human about it. I feel connected to the women of centuries before me who made bread and to those who still make bread today.

And there's something about bread and about my Catholic background that invests the bread-making and bread-having with a symbolic meaning that makes it significant and weighty. I feel so pleased and proud every time the yeast comes alive, as it should, and the bread rises and hardens and browns to perfection.

My bread is simple but solid and nourishing and its warmth and freshness is a welcome respite from overly processed and additive-laden alternatives. It's not artisanal or fancy or special, but it will do.

Even though my bread is a "fast bread," according to the bread maker's setting, it's not rushed and it doesn't skip any steps. I'm thinking bread is the perfect segue back into the routine of life after pausing for a long-in-coming and surprising moment of nothing-to-do-ness.