Bread - Monday

More than thirty years ago, I started making bread at home – wheat bread. Our two young daughters were fussy about food – I hoped that bread, warm from the oven, would appeal to them.

I used the same things that had been used to make bread for thousands of years – wheat flour, yeast or leaven, salt, water and a little fat or oil. But I had a lot to learn about how to use them.

Wheat bread wasn’t a traditional food in the north of Scotland in the distant past – wheat doesn’t grow well here. It is thought that wheat came originally from the upper Nile Valley a very long time ago. And we know that bread was a daily food in Palestine when the books of the Bible were being written.

The word ‘bread’ appears about three hundred and fifty times in the Bible, more times than any other food. In the Old Testament, the word is often used as a metaphor for the friendship that existed between God and his people – it was He who would provide them with bread to keep them alive. And when Jesus described himself as ‘the bread of life’ he gave bread the highest of honours.

But man doesn’t live by bread alone. And whatever type of hunger we have, there is great depth in the petition, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’

I am much indebted to Mairead McIver for her advice.