Breaking Bread

This weekend I did something I thought I’d never do. Never in my wildest imagination did I contemplate something so delectable, so savory, so satisfying.
I baked bread. Ha.

Well, I had help of course. It started when my department head suggested that teachers (meaning the single females) come over for a day of bread baking. Although the idea seemed quite random, I was up for a challenge. The alterior motive of bonding and beating the blues of rain days in Istanbul just before the break made it well worth it.

I've baked bread a few times before: Once on a junior high whim with a friend who thought it would be fun to make the teddy bear bread recipe she found in a book, and a few times with my sister in an attempt to make challah for pseudo-traditonal Shabbat dinners. However, I certainly would not go so far as to say I actually know how to make bread. It always seemed like one of those esoteric skills known only by grandmothers who came from Eastern Europe or Martha Stewart types who always had matching napkins and placemats. Although my past attempts tasted good, they certain wouldn’t pass a taste test by a more refined consumer. Bread baking certainly did not enter the realm of modern woman who has only recently learned to use a chopping knife.

Alas, this was no Betty Crocker bakeoff. There were no aprons or hair nets in sight (okay, there was a rolling pin) it did not feel provincial or trite in any way. Along with my English teacher counterparts, we brought our ingredients to the spacious kitchen of our fearless leader. We had spent the week contemplating which type of bread to make, and by chance covered all the taste buds with our selections: sweet cinnamon raisin bread, savory garlic and herbs, aromatic olive, and my own simple challah.

We took our stations at the kitchen counter as our leader circulated and gave us pointers. “You’ll need a little more flour to compensate for the extra water” or, “put oil in the bowl so the dough doesn’t stick.” Cooking has both the creative satisfaction and the instant gratification of playing with an easy bake oven, making it pleasurable on multiple levels. I felt a carthasis of sorts as I kneaded the dough with the palm of my hand and, after it rose, deflated the sticky bloated dough paunch with my punches.

Baking bread is one of the activities I could just as easily do back home. I suppose there is noting intrinsically Turkish about spending a Saturday with friends baking and eating. Yet I cannot imagine standing in my friend’s kitchens in their small walk-ups or studios doing much else besides drinking wine and taking. I have come to discover my ability to discover here, to find new things not only in the cultural nooks and crannies but also amid the human connections I continue to form.