Feeling a Little Seedy

I love going shopping at my favorite Amish stores near Lancaster, PA.  It's like a treasure hunt every time I go as they never have the same thing from visit to visit.  These stores stock items normally too expensive to buy at prices too hard to resist.  Food items are especially fun because it gets the creative juices flowing trying to decide how to incorporate them into daily living.

Yesterday, I found good unbleached Occidental flour and wheat gluten, pumpkin seeds, whole flax seed, and wheat germ.  This gave me the idea to incorporate these into a hearty honey whole wheat multi-grain bread using the foolproof bread recipe.  Here's how I changed the recipe:

Ann's recipe calls for 1 - 2 cups of milled flax seed instead of using dough enhancer.  I, instead, used 1 heaping tablespoon of wheat gluten.  Wheat gluten helps heavier doughs such as whole wheat multigrain breads to rise and are therefore, less dense.  Don't we wish we could sometimes add gluten to our brains when the fog rolls in?  I do!  :-)  I then added to my recipe a half cup of roasted pumpkin seeds, a half cup rolled oatmeal (not the quick oats), a quarter cup of toasted sesame seeds, half a cup of Kretschmer's Honey Wheat Germ, and a half cup of whole flax seeds.  I also used half unbleached Occidental flour and half whole wheat flour.

I have to say, I couldn't resist making a whole recipe of bread.  In a previous post, I mentioned that the recipe is really too large, even for my commercial grade Hobart mixer.  The dough hook will keep the dough from climbing out of the bowl, but truthfully, I have not mastered the art of dough hooks and prefer the regular paddle.  So while making bread I was delightfully flouring myself, the kitchen counter, the floor, and anything else within about a 6 foot radius.  It was a little hard to see whether or not the dough was really pulling off the sides of the mixing bowl, so I added additional flour until I felt it was sufficient for a good loaf without making it too dry.  This was fairly subjective on my part:  ummm, that looks pretty good. While I sprayed my cleaned off counter with oil and oiled my hands, I lifted up a silent prayer that all that gooey goodness would transform into a warm, sweet, nutty delight.  I took the yeasty blob and divided it into three large loaf pans, covered, and I let them rise for about an hour.  Ann's recipe says 30 minutes or until doubled.  I wanted to see what would happen if I let them go longer.

To diverge for a moment,  our Friday night bible study, One Thousand Gifts, focused on grace.  Part of our discussion revolved around the need to just "be still".  This, "being still," is really an action.   In order to experience real peace, I must first actively stop.  Frankly, I am a pretty active person and once in gear, it's hard to get me to down shift and then I usually just run out of diesel.  Lately, though, God has been taking me to new places in my life where, rather than trying to control and manage areas of my life (like my career), I realized I needed to stop, ask God to lead, and just quietly wait on him.  There is such a peace in the quiet that cannot be heard or felt in the din of a hurried day.  A result was a promotion.  It is so much easier to know where I belong when I let the One who created me show me where he wants to use me next.  It gives life meaning when I know I am placed somewhere for a purpose.

So, are there other areas where I could be still and know that he is God?  What if I just left the bread to rise a little more?  As I lifted the flour sack that covered my rising loaves I was thrilled.  They were huge!  Now, if only they tasted as good as they looked!  I lowered each pan into the oven, worrying  they might not all fit.  Fortunately they just fit and off they baked.  Soon the smell of freshly baking bread came floating through the house and I could hardly wait to see the finished product.

The time came to take them from the oven and they looked beautiful.  I felt like Steve Urkel:  did I do thaaat?  I slid them out of their pans and onto the cooling rack not feeling a whole lot of "peace be still," but a whole lot of "I want some of that!"  Finally, the loaves were cool enough to slice and I called my husband in to try a slice together.  A little butter, a little pear honey and wow, the sweetness of the honey, the nuttiness of the pumpkin and toasted sesame seeds- it all came together.  The crumb turned out perfectly and it reminded me - God asks for obedience from us, and then he does the proofing.  In the desire to understand "peace, be still", he took a good recipe and taught me how he makes it so much more than I could ever expect.  What a lesson.  What a God!