Flour, Faith, and a Flat Tire: The Unexpected Start of a Baking Legacy

Our Buick Regal slowly came to a stop on the gravel road as Gordon edged the car over to the side. Hissing from the rear tire settled us a little off center and we looked at each other in disbelief. We were dozens of miles from civilization on a leisure trip to the Wapi Lava Flows in Southern Idaho with no cell phone or back up plan to get help.

The small donut sized spare tire was the only thing we had to limp us back to American Falls to the Les Schwab tire store where the tire technicians informed us not only was the tire worn out but all the tires needed replaced, a cost we hadn’t anticipated or could afford.

We were newly married and expecting our first baby with only a few months to go before delivery. With doctor bills and living expenses we were already pinching pennies. Adding a $400 unexpected tire purchase seemed impossible to cover.

It was our pride in refusing to take an advanced loan from the family farm that pushed us to buy the tires with only $15 left in our account to spend on food and necessities for the rest of the month. Could we do it? After our doctor’s appointment the next week I stood in the grocery store looking at the dozens of loaves of bread analyzing cost per slices and quality over quantity. It came down to a mathematical problem. One $3 loaf would eat up ⅕ of the money we had left in our account. Was there another way of eating for less?

Growing up in a large family of 12 jogged my memory of making bread, lots of bread with a commercial bread mixer my parents had bought from the school kitchen. I knew how to make bread but had seldom made it by hand. Could making bread from scratch be cheaper than buying?

I headed to the baking aisle where rows of flour, sugar, salt, yeast and oil were waiting. My calculating mind was dizzy analyzing the cost of making bread versus buying. The calculations began to prove that for the same cost of buying one loaf of bread I could make 5-6 loaves of bread by buying the ingredients and making it from scratch. My 5-1 ratio was convincing. I retrieved a shopping cart and began my journey making bread by hand.

I bought my first mixing bowl when I was still in high school. Lyle Swenson, my mother’s friend, hosted a Tupperware party and I ordered a large green plastic mixing bowl. Partly to be kind and partly for the sake of owning something of my own. When it arrived I promptly put it in storage and forgot about it. It would be five years after graduation and a grocery sack full of bread baking ingredients before I remembered I had it.

Digging out my Tupperware bowl I opened the Betty Crocker cookbook we got for our wedding and thumbed to the bread making tab and flipped open the page. There in color was a perfect looking loaf of white bread sitting on a wooden bread board. I opened the flour, put the salt, yeast packets, oil and sugar on the counter and began following the instructions. Warm water, yeast, sugar. Let bubble, then add oil and then flour. Knead by hand for 10 minutes. Let rise for 1-2 hours, shape into loaf, let rise for 1 hour in pan and bake for 30-40 minutes.

As the process of mixing, kneading and raising took place in the small single wide trailer we lived in Raft River with my belly growing larger with pregnancy I thought back to the myriad of times I had made bread in the back room of our farmhouse growing up. There were large 50 lb sacks of white flour and a wheat grinder sitting next to the mixer. I would plug the grinder in, secure the cloth bag and turn it on before scooping in brown kernels of wheat grinding it into flour. The rich nutty smell would tell me what quality of flavor the bread would be. A 60 quart bowl would fill to the brim with rising dough as I punched it down in between practicing the piano, washing dishes, or reading a book. Sometimes I would sit out in the back room with the phone cord wound around me talking to friends and boys while I watched and waited for the dough to rise. Loaf after loaf of dough was shaped into pans raising on the kitchen counter where they went into the oven in shifts, their hot steaming goodness filling the house.

Here, all by myself in the small kitchen of our first home with gold paisley linoleum, orange carpet and green countertops I watch the flour, water, sugar, oil and yeast turn into a magic that my new husband and I would eat for our sustenance. Making bread by hand is different from making it with a machine. The floppity, flop of the paddle going round and round can tell me when the dough has reached optimum hydration as I add flour. It’s my ears that alert me. But making bread by hand requires a different feel.

Kneading and adding flour until the dough speaks to me, to my hands, to the pull of the dough with my arms and body is essential. It becomes a full body experience. Both have been grounding for me. A return to the earth and its ability to take care of us.

Our tire going flat in the desert, our small cash flow and dire circumstances provided me with an opportunity that started a revolution and legacy in bread making that has carried me over four decades and three generations tying me to my past and future.

Written by: Paula Dawn Webb

Paula is our mom. She is a professional writer, baker, and life-long promoter of a whole-food, plant-based lifestyle. She writes weekly for our blog at plaingrains.com where she shares her experiences and love of mindful nutrition.  

Paula earned an Associates of Food-Science Nutrition, Bachelors of English/Professional Writing and a Master's of Communications.