Here’s my favorite bread recipe: cloverleaf rolls.
[youtube id=”KtIv-q46_ZE”]
Is there an activity like this in your life — something that might seem mundane, but that is (or could become) a spiritual practice for you? Please tell us about it!
Best blessings,
Adam
P.S. For those who’d like to try it, here’s that recipe for cloverleaf rolls.
1. Stir a packet of yeast into half a cup of warm water, with an eighth of a teaspoon of sugar. Give it five minutes or so to show you it’s alive.
2. Mix together three and a half cups of flour (that’s about a pound), two tablespoons of butter (I grated it in, because I couldn’t find my pastry knife), two teaspoons of salt, half a cup of milk, a third of a cup of water, and one egg. Once it’s thoroughly mixed, let it rest for five minutes or so.
3. Knead it — roughly fifty times, but who’s counting? Then put the dough in an oiled bowl, cover it, and leave it in a warm place to rise. Allow an hour or more for this — it should rise to at least one and a half times its original volume. (In the video, I let it go a bit too long — it more than doubled in volume — but that’s okay too.)
4. Punch it down and knead it briefly again. Cut and roll it into small balls, and put three balls in each cup of an oiled muffin pan. It takes two 3×4 muffin pans — I usually get 18-20 rolls. Cover the pans (I used oiled cling film) and let them rise again.
5. Brush each roll with melted butter. Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for about 16 minutes, until lightly browned.
Blessed baking!
Ok! You have inspired me to bake and add some more health with my new year pulse pledge .
Great, Katie! And best blessings on your new year pledge.
Hi Adam,
I enjoyed the bread-making lesson (most especially the part about making sure the yeast is “alive”–something which I didn’t do the one and only time I tried to bake bread many years ago and produced loaves of inedible bricks).
Though I don’t consider myself to be much of a cook, I’ve always enjoyed the art of blessing others via my simple meals. Like you, I often think of those who will be eating whatever I’m producing in my kitchen, imagining the recipients of my food receiving an injection of love when they eat my lasagnas, soups, cookies, salads, chili, etc. Another favorite activity of mine is to bless others via the checks that I write. As I’m writing out the check to pay a bill, I imagine all the hands that will touch the envelope containing my bill-payment (the employees of the postal service, the electric company, the gas company, the credit-card company, etc.) and in my mind’s eye I “see” all those hands receiving a blessing of love.
This post has prompted me to remember that as a teenager, working as a janitor, I used to sing while I was vacuuming a doctor’s office, imagining that I was filling the entire space with the energy of light and love. (What a happy memory!) So, yes, I agree. We can all be ministers to each other, “transmitting God’s blessings to others,” as you put it, “praying through our hands” via a great variety of mundane activities.
Thanks for these good thoughts, Adam! …. Sr. S
Writing checks — neat idea! I’ve always thought of that as a chore. Next time I’ll try following your suggestion. Always assuming there’s any money in the bank!
I hope you noticed, Sr. S., that I didn’t make the connection between the three parts of the cloverleaf roll and the Trinity. I was tempted to point that out just for you, but I resisted!
Actually, Adam, I had already thought about the connection between your “clover-leaf” rolls and the concept of the Christian trinity. Because I’m not at all taken with this particular Christian belief, I began to shield myself when I sensed the opportunity had arisen (pun intended) for a bread-making Christian to make mention of it. I was relieved when you didn’t speak of it in your video, but–ah-h-h–here it is (just for my benefit, it seems–ha!ha!).
Ah, yeast, that sacred ancient life… I never could look at bread the same way after I heard a 1980s episode of “Ask Dr. Science” (“remember, kids, he’s not a real doctor”) carefully explain that the little air pockets in bread were actually fossilized yeast screams, and that if you listened carefully, you could hear them being released when you sliced the loaf…
But putting that theologically troubling image aside, I do enjoy bread making. And, as to other mundane acts of spiritual practice, I have to admit that I still like to do the dishes by hand – i.e. the other end of the whole cooking/eating/cleaning cycle of blessings. It is very much a reflective and prayerful activity for me.
The old Zen path to enlightenment: Eat your porridge. Wash your bowl.
But muffin tins are annoying.
Theologically troubling image, indeed! I didn’t want to go there in the video, but yes, all those holy and helpful yeast cells have to die for me to make bread. It’s a more complex spirituality that blesses beginning of life and the end of life equally — that pays attention to the way not only life, but death also is sacred. Gardening has that depth too, I think: we not only plant and water and nurture, but also harvest and weed. I think more people find God in the planting than in the weeding — and more find God in cooking than in doing the dishes. I’m trying to do both, but I admit it’s an effort.
Now I’m reminded of a quatrain by Longfellow: