Up the Sunbeam

The homey fragrance wafts its way from the kitchen throughout the whole house, bringing with it memories of other times and places, other kitchens made warm and pleasantly steamy from an oven full of homemade bread. Of course the first one that comes to mind is the kitchen I grew up in, the kitchen in Canada where I learned under the patient and practiced hand of my mother how to measure and mix, to knead and form dough into loaves or rolls. How I loved to come home from school to find her just taking one of her beautiful creations out of the oven--best after school snack EVER!! I remember visits to a tiny kitchen in South Dakota where my Great Auntie Bess made homemade bread that was like food for the angels. I remember Thanksgiving Days in Iowa in the kitchen of my Auntie Marilyn, and of course my Grandma Ellen in her big old Iowa farmhouse, and my Grandma Laurene in the little yellow house my Grandpa built for her. Here in California, in my own kitchen, I have been baking bread f...