Well Bread

Earlier this week, Audrey followed all of the steps to bake her first-ever challah. There turns out to be a range of steps that involve activating yeast, mixing together dry and wet ingredients, adding in the yeast, waiting for the dough to rise, and letting it rise some more. Then separating and rolling and braiding and baking and cooling, and then waiting for far too long to taste the product that is giving off a heavenly smell that fills the kitchen. The process took most of an afternoon. But, given that we are sheltering in place for the Pandemic, most of our afternoons are pretty free these days. And, given, the wonderful taste of the bread when I finally got to sample it, the afternoon was well spent.

the challah in all its tasty beauty

Step by step

Audrey would probably note that all I did to help create the challah was cheer her on and take photographs to post on Facebook. But those are important parts of my role as family documentarian, even if I am self-appointed.

The real product of the bread-making venture was the challah that emerged, of course. It was large and beautiful and remarkably tasty. But I think the real story was the yeast that was at the heart of the process. There is something magical about yeast. “It’s alive!” – to quote an old horror film. And these days, it is pretty hard to come by.

When Audrey first came up with the notion of baking a challah, Amanda volunteered to pick up the ingredients. Amanda has become our designated shopper during our Pandemic home stand. She reasons that her parents are in that age group considered more vulnerable. And we accept that concept, as long as she doesn’t call us “old.”

Returning from her shopping trip, Amanda reported several key failures. The store was out of both all-purpose flour and yeast. There must be a lot of bread making going on during these home-bound days. So Audrey went out on her own the next day to our small but very convenient local market. She waited outside the store, wearing her face mask and standing at a safe distance from other customers, until she was allowed to enter and shop.  Right away, she found one of the last bags of all-purpose flour on the shelf.  But no yeast!  She sought out an employee to ask about the missing ingredient and was encouraged to learn that the store did have a supply of yeast, but it was being kept (preserved?) in a storeroom to discourage hoarding.

A novice at yeast buying and knowing that the recipe called for two packets of yeast, Audrey asked for two packages. “I can only let you have one,” the employee said. “That’s the limit.”

Luckily, the employee explained that each yeast package contains three packets of yeast to use for baking. So Audrey could now make her challah and have an extra packet of yeast left over to use for some other baked delicacy. The challah project was now a go! And it was also a big success. I can say that after consuming several open-face challah sandwiches and making plans for French toast on the weekend.

Audrey’s yeast adventure reminds me of children’s book that I wrote in the mid-1980s for World Book, the encyclopedia people. My book was part of a young readers’ set of books and cassette tapes (which shows how long ago this was). My book, being written to help preschoolers recognize words beginning with the letters B and S and understand the concepts of big and small, was entitled “Barry’s Big Bread.” 

Barry the Book

and Barry the cassette

Its plot involved a bear named Barry--who loves all things big--trying to bake the biggest bread he could. To do that, he doubled the amount of yeast his recipe called for. His bread dough rose and rose. He kept moving it to larger and larger bowls and then into the largest baking pan in his house. When he tried to put it into the oven, the pan wouldn’t fit and dough spilled all over everything. Barry had made a big mess and was one sorry bear! To make him feel better, his friends helped him clean up the mess and then brought him some small bread, in the form of bagels.

That was the plot I proposed. Now, remember that this was the mid-1980s, and I was pitching my idea to people in the Midwest, and I was the only Jewish guy in the room. The publishing people offered one major criticism. “Very few of our readers will know what a bagel is,” they said. “Barry’s friends will have to bring him a bag of buns.” A bag of buns? Really? I reluctantly accepted the change but did have Barry request the biggest bun in the bag as the story ended.

Times have obviously changed since the mid-1980s, and bagels have developed a universal appeal—even in the Midwest. But I am getting off my subject, which is the big and wonderful challah that Audrey baked thanks to her determination to score a supply of yeast and the magic of the yeast itself.

Happy Birthday, Mark Strand

As an extra credit project during my junior year in high school, a classmate and I created a bulletin board display entitled “Three Savannah Poets—Conrad Aiken, Billy Bray, and Michael Goodman.” I would like to think that we consciously gave Aiken top billing; after all, he was the only one of us whose poetry had been published. But I suspect that we were just arranging the names in alphabetical order. Billy and I each spent a lot of time writing poems. And what did our efforts get us? Extra credit in English 11.

I am thinking of those days because I read this morning that today is the birthday of Mark Strand, a former U.S. Poet Laureate and, for one semester in my college career, the man who directed a poetry writing seminar that had a major impact on me. During our housecleaning efforts as part of our Pandemic isolation, I came across some of my poems from that class. I wrote some of the best poems of my life during that semester. I also wrote very few poems. It wasn’t so much that I was intimidated by the other writers’ work. I became more critical of my own writing, and less willing to share what I considered to be inferior work. The novelist and essayist Allegra Goodman (no relation) calls this “the inner critic” and suggests that it can screw up even good writers. She explains this in an essay entitled “O.K., You're Not Shakespeare. Now Get Back to Work.” I wish she had been around when I was taking Strand’s seminar.

Mark Strand, as I remember him, big head and all

I remember a lot of details about Strand, who passed away in 2014 at age 80. He was tall and handsome. He had an impressively large head. He had a lot of poet friends whose work he often shared with us—Charles Simic, Galway Kinnell, James Wright, and, most impressive of all, Elizabeth Bishop, whom he even invited to read at Yale. He also had some innovative techniques that I appropriated when I taught writing a few years later.

For example, he would give us six random words to include in a poem of 8-12 lines. The words could violate certain grammar rules. A word normally a noun could be used as a verb if that worked for you. Here is one I wrote using the words fit, ice, hazard, flour, flower, and oxygen.

A Warmer World

Born into another age

Fit not for ice, but with the warmth

Of wool unsheared,

I would not care to hazard all I own

To flee to the harshness of a winter’s hate.

Born into another world

Where sunlight falls upon my eyes

Like sifted flour,

I then would dream of sharing oxygen

With flowers now left lonely by my flight.

Does this poem make any sense? Not really. But it fit the rules of the class. It also taught me that every word in a poem (article or story) counts. That is probably the most important lesson that I learned from Strand. It may help explain why I took up editing as a profession. And the poem above vividly shows why I did not continue as a poet.

For some of us, writing poetry blends pleasure with pain.
Our readers may have other ideas.

But I did write a few of what I considered to be good poems during the semester. Here is my favorite:

Love at 5:15

Wedged between the world’s problems

And an artist-beard in the smell of rush hour

I proposed breath then marriage

To a blonde-haired escapist

On the run to the Grand Concourse;

Then marrying her reflection in the artist’s glasses

I begot a subway map

Of every exotic location in central Queens.

Tell me, dearest,

Why I have never seen you before on the five-fifteen?

Your hair is beautiful near the green Dyre Avenue sign;

Your eyes more intriguing than the Daily News.

While I thought this poem “intriguing” with its suggestion that someone could fall madly in love with someone else on a crowded subway car and expect to encounter the same person again during another rush-hour trip, I noticed a critical comment that I must have received when I read the poem out in the class. “Its archness shows a lack of seriousness, which is attractive but may spell ultimate failure.” I think that’s a little harsh, don’t you?

Happy Birthday, Mark Strand. I am remembering you fondly today. Thank you for your gift of words. I use a little of that gift every day.

A Night Quite Different

Audrey and I have been conducting the family Seder on the first night of Passover for many years. We took it over from my mother-in-law a few years after we were married and have just continued as our children arrived and have grown. Many years, we have extended our “family” with invited guests and expanded our enjoyment. We did that again last night at our 2020 Seder, but this one was especially special.

Audrey and I have different roles in the Seder. She coordinates the food part, and I run the service part. She usually gives me free rein, up to a point. If I am too long-winded, the food is ready to serve, and the guests are getting impatient to eat, Audrey lets me know that it is time to move on to what our Haggadah calls “the festive meal.”

Frankly, I like being the host and conductor. I am a little intolerant of “loosely run” Seders. We start at the beginning with a little introduction (during which I may pedantically introduce a theme), say the blessings over the wine and green vegetable, tell the story beginning by putting the youngest person (usually Amanda) on the spot to say the “Four Questions,” call out the plagues with finger drops of wine, sing Dayenu (“It would have been enough”), and make the famous Hillel Sandwich with both horseradish and the sweet apple stuff (Haroset). For me to be comfortable, there need to be a certain percentage of Hebrew prayers mixed with the English storytelling. And the full Grace after Meals complete with chants familiar from my youth and the kids’ camp experiences. And 4-5 songs performed in different tunes, depending on what we remember well. There are sometimes debates over which tune is the “right” one.

If this sounds like a lot, that point was made clear to me last night.  Amanda’s good friends Nicole and Phil said they could join us from Atlanta for only a few minutes because of their own family obligations and they weren’t sure they were ready for a “serious” Seder. Our New York cousins Mike and Gloria said they would be sorry to miss out on Michael’s “erudite” Seder. I’m not sure that was a compliment.

Which brings me to last night’s Seder and why it was truly “different from all other nights.”

Hosts and guests join in at our Zeder.
Miles couldn't keep us apart.

Like thousands of homes around the country and the world, we held our Seder over Zoom—a “Zeder” Brett called it, with me as Zeyde (Grandpa). There were a few glitches or scheduling issues. Brett’s computer microphone wasn’t functioning, so Amanda brought his voice in via cell phone while his lips moved on the computer screen. Nicole and Phil had an at-home Seder conflict at her parents’ house, so they cut out early. Brett’s friends (and our “adopted children”) Nicole and David—beaming in from way up near the Canadian border— made do with homemade matzoh crackers and missed out on brisket and gefilte fish. And throughout there was a slight timing lag, as voices had to cross miles of great divide to reach each other. The lag was particularly apparent as our friends Harvey and Phyllis joined us in readings and song.

All of that being said, this was probably the best Seder we have ever run or joined in. We shared memories of Seders past. Harvey remembered how his father would keep reciting the Haggadah story in Hebrew even while others around the table talked amongst themselves. Phyllis recalled sleeping under the table during what seemed to be endless Seders when she was a child. Audrey remembered how her mother and she would get tipsy over the cups of wine and would drive her very religious uncle crazy with their giggling. Audrey reminded Nicole of the Seder when Nicole told my mother, who was visiting from Savannah, about the special promotional presents she received during her time as editor-in-chief of Playgirl. “What kinds of presents?” my mother asked. “You don’t want to know,” Nicole replied. Amanda described the confusion involved with our conflicting song tunes. And I got to repeat the stories about the goat that may or may not have entered my Aunt Dot’s house during a Seder many years ago and about the platter of gravy-laden brisket that I may or may not have dropped as a teen one year but still get blamed for even today.

Anyone need a Playgirl t-shirt?

We happily exceeded the 40-minute Zoom time limit, which was gratefully extended by the powers that be at Zoom. And we laughed as we said the blessings and recited some of the story of Passover. Then we broke to eat our festive meal separately but also together. Harvey later joined us to sing the special Passover songs. Phyllis missed that imperfectly coordinated singing because she was already asleep and expressed annoyance that Harvey did not awaken her to join in.

I am hopeful that next year we will not need to conduct a Zeder but can instead gather at our home to share Passover memories and make new ones. But this Seder was special in its bridging both time and distance—bringing us together when we were forced apart.