The Smell of Brown Bread Baking

The cooler and wetter weather of the northwest autumn seems to have settled in upon us. Sweatshirts are being pulled from the closet far more often during the evenings and early mornings and I’m enjoying the warmth of having a scented candle burning. Fall is here and I love it! It has always been my favorite season.

One of the ladies in our neighborhood organized a fall soup luncheon and asked if I’d bring a loaf of bread. I enjoy baking but just don’t do it very often anymore, so I welcomed the “excuse” to pull out the bread pans and turn on the oven. I quickly decided to use a recipe that had been given to me almost twenty years ago. It is a sweet bread that makes an excellent side dish to just about any meal. So, this morning I set out the ingredients on the kitchen counter and began to mix them together. What fun to be using this favorite recipe again!

What I was not prepared for was the flood of memories that came rushing in upon me as the kitchen warmed and the smell of that bread baking filled the room. We had been living in the desert of Southern California about three years when I began a home business of painting sweatshirts and selling them at a craft fair that was held once a month, from October through March during the height of the snowbird season, in one of the many RV parks in our area.

We also realized that the snowbirds, in their fifth wheels and travel trailers, didn’t really like to heat their “rigs” by doing a lot of baking. But, they still liked their baked goods!  We were looking for a way that the boys could earn a little bit of extra money and wondered what if they baked brown bread and sold it at the craft fair? It would teach them something about baking, how to manage the money they made, and would encourage interaction with the people as they sold the bread at the craft fair.

With a small amount of fear, we ventured forth and gave it a try. I measured out the dry ingredients on Thursday and on Friday the boys took turns mixing and baking a batch under the watchful eye of Mom! They made four loaves of bread with each batch and as soon as one batch came out of the oven, the next one was ready to go in. The kitchen sink was constantly in use washing the mixing bowl and bread pans. It was a steady assembly-line type of operation that produced 36 loaves of bread by the end of the day. We sliced two loaves to use as samples and the other 34 were sold for $3 a loaf.

As we approached the beginning of that first craft show I wondered how would these two grade school-aged boys do selling their bread and talking with the older adults at the fair? What would I do with the leftover loaves of bread? How would they react to the possibility of not selling very much? So many concerns!

I remember the other craft people smiling at us as the boys and I set our table up that first time. I think they were wondering the same things that I had been wondering the night before. And then the first flood of customers came through the door.  We had been given a table in one of the first aisles, a very good spot. But, it was the two young boys at the table that sparked an interest in what we had that really drew people to our table.

As people stopped to see what it was we were selling my heart slowly crept up into my throat. I was so anxious for the boys, concerned they would become nervous and fearful as they talked with their customers. To my surprise that was the last thing I needed to worry about! Our oldest son took charge immediately and would have put the best of any salesman to shame as he promoted their bread. TJ quietly allowed his older brother to take over this role and he simply maintained the sample dish and continued to replenish the loaves sitting on the table. And that fear of what we would do with all the left-over bread … that was truly wasted time and emotional energy on my part! The boys sold out within the first three hours of the six hour day!

The boys all ready to sell their bread.

The boys continued selling their bread for the next four years. They created a competition of sorts, seeing if they could sell out faster than when they had at the previous show. I think their record was selling out within an hour! The bread was so popular we began receiving calls the day before the shows asking if we were coming or if the caller could reserve a few loaves. One year the boys even received a request for a special order to be made just before Christmas! It became a very good business for them!

The last year the boys made bread was 1999, twelve years ago. I honestly don’t remember the last time my kitchen has been warmed by the oven, filling the house with the wonderful scent of brown bread. But, it was today. And, it was not just the kitchen that was warmed by the oven pushing the chills of the October morning out. It was my heart that was warmed with the memories of two boys working side-by-side as they made “The Dough Boys” Brown Bread.