But first: Save the Date!
Mark your calendars, especially if you live in Chicago or the Chicagoland area! I’ll be doing an event at The Book Cellar in Lincoln Square on June 13 aka Launch Day! I’ll be in conversation with my dear friend and author Kelly O’Connor McNees (buy her books! They are so good!). In lieu of a celebration cake and in keeping with the theme, I’ll have a selection of breads from one of my very favorite bakeries, Hewn (founder Ellen wrote on my endorsements), plus accoutrements nosh on. Tell your friends. This will be open to the public. Hooray!
Why bread?
Why do you think so many people leaned into bread baking in the darkest moments of the pandemic? That is the question that drove me to finally write a book proposal based on an idea I had dancing around in my head for years and years and years.
I was one of those people who from 2020-2022 kept a sourdough starter bubbling away on my counter top, delivered homemade English muffins made with sourdough discard to friends across town, and checked various suppliers for updates on their stocks of yeast and flours. In truth, this wasn’t new behavior for me. I’d started baking bread while in grad school, nearly 15 years ago. I just found myself leaning in more heavily while stuck at home (mostly — I was still working as a hospital chaplain then, as well).
Certainly, this need to knead, to shape and bake, and eat bread was catalyzed by more than just boredom, I thought. More than just extra time. I didn’t actually have extra time. In fact, with everyone at home, including my then-Kindergartner and first-grader, using up all the Internet and space as we attempted to maintain work and school obligations from our small 2-bedroom apartment, I had less time to bake than before.
When I delivered bread to friends and neighbors, dropping it on porches and then standing back six feet, I knew something special was happening. It wasn’t just that I’d made delicious bread (though *hair toss* I had). This specialness wasn’t about me at all. Or even really about the friends I was feeding. Something communal that extended beyond our personal connection was happening. It was as if we were tapping into a deep pattern that existed long before I performed that mystical alchemy of turning water, salt, yeast, and flour into the stuff of life in my own kitchen. There are Christian connotations here—I am a priest after all, but bread is a symbol for life in many of the world’s religions. There is a spiritual dimension to it that supersedes (or perhaps, flows beneath and through) all walks of life.
This dimension of bread is what I wanted to explore, by reflecting on my story and others’. I’d had the book idea in my head for years, thanks to some events in my life and my own realization that I was called to a life of making bread to be broken and shared in my vocation as a priest. Now, in those first winter months of the pandemic, it suddenly felt critical that I put down those questions in writing.
True story: I wrote the proposal in a moment of immense disappointment and spite when an opportunity I was excited about was suddenly turned up dry. Admittedly, for me, for better or for worse, spite is like the warm, humid environment to an otherwise slow-rising tray of idea rolls.
My book tells some of my story and why bread has mattered to me. I tell the story of what happens when you plant wheat, how fermentation is as ancient as life itself, why New England hot dog buns are the only hot dog buns worth eating, and how a single loaf of bread, broken and shared, is a simple but powerful way to practice inclusion.
Next newsletter, I’ll say more about those events that first planted the seed of an idea for the book.
More Book News!
A week or so ago, my friend Elizabeth Felicetti emailed me to say she was reading Publisher’s Weekly and stumbled across a review of The Sacred Life of Bread. Back when I was writing those last chapters of the book, I had to completely tune out the very idea that my book would get reviewed, so it’s both exciting and terrifying to see the first reviews begin to trickle in.
By the way, Elizabeth is also an Episcopal priest and author. Her book, Unexpected Abundance: The Fruitful Lives of Women Without Children, is also available for pre-order. I cannot wait to read it and know that it will become a treasured resource for me.
Subscribe and Share
We’re getting close to launch, people, and I am planning to do a couple of giveaways. I don’t intend to make this newsletter paid at any point, but I would really love if you can share with the bread bakers and eaters in your life!