Dear Kids,
I 
think you probably remember I used to bake when you were younger. It’s like watching a miracle happen when you see random ingredients thrown together turn into something as beautiful as a fresh baked loaf of bread. As you know, I got into baking a few years ago when I began to make challot for our shabbat dinners. Not all of my attempts turned out great; and yet, some were amazing and pure works of art (do you remember the shlissel challah I made after Pesach this year? If not, take a look at the picture in this post). For me, the best part of making bread was seeing how excited you got when I whisked the challah cover off just before making the HaMotzi, the challah still warm from the oven. As finicky as the three of you were when it came to food, you always loved my breads, even the bad ones. I still can’t believe how much SBK loved to eat my bread. She would eat it until it was gone. It didn’t matter how dry or stale it got: “I love Aba’s bread” was all she would say.
Today was an exciting day. SBK made her first bread. You probably don’t remember now, but you walked up to me this afternoon and asked if I would teach you how to make an Irish soda bread (I had been experimenting with several recipes recently, so that was the latest style bread we were enjoying). What a great bread to start with I thought: it only has about 4 ingredients…and I had leftover buttermilk I was trying to use up, so it really was a win-win situation. I remember like it was just this afternoon, you were so excited to dump the flour from the measuring cup into the bowl. I think that was your absolute favorite part. You also got excited to stick your fingers in the flour (that wasn’t really part of the bread-making process, you just liked the feel of the flour); you said it was so soft. Then came the kneading. You were pretty surprised how sticky and messy your hands got from the wet dough, but I think you were even more surprised that I didn’t yell at you for making a mess. And how you laughed when I poured flour on your hands and told you to rub them together to get all the dough off your fingers instead of washing the dough off.
I will never forget the look on your face when I handed you the razor blade and showed you how to score the dough. You were so excited that I trusted you with such a sharp tool. But as always, when you were focused and had my attention, you were calm, patient, and methodical. I completely trusted you (and you knew it…you brought up the story about when we were hiking, and I let you go out further and closer to the cliff’s edge than I let SBR…because you were calmer and being safer). And to no one’s surprise, your first loaf of bread came out of the oven tasting great! You Nailed It on your first try! As I said in the Facebook post (with the picture of you holding the bread knife with a bit of a maniacal look in your eye), kol hakavod. I was almost as proud of you as you were of yourself!
I know that you learned an important lesson today. You learned that you are able to make an amazing loaf of bread and that it’s pretty easy. So, , remember how simple it is to feed yourself, and as long as you have flour, baking soda, salt, and buttermilk, you will never starve. Oh, and the trick about rubbing your doughy hands with flour to clean them, you should remember that too. It’s a pretty useful trick.
Love,
Aba
