Homemade bread loaves. Paul Chaston / Pixabay.com / 2014 / CC0 1.0
The 17th of November is Homemade Bread Day, a day to enjoy a slice of warm, buttered homemade bread.
If it happens to fall on a work day, it can be tricky to manage making bread in between doing everything else.
If you work from a home office, or are a stay at home person, then you can perhaps manage to fit in making bread by hand as your breaks if it’s a slow day. Otherwise, it can be a bit tricky to tell your boss you can’t make it into work today because you have to stay at home to knead your bread dough.
There are a few ways out of this conundrum. First, Homemade Bread Day doesn’t have to actually mean made by you at “your home.” Perhaps you have a nice neighbour who’s celebrating the day, and who will be at home making bread, who will be kind enough to gift you with some with just a few hints.
Secondly, if you have a bread machine, you’re laughing. Plop the ingredients in the machine, set the timer for it to be ready just after you get home from work, and you’ll come home to the smell of homemade bread.
If you don’t have a bread machine and you have to leave the house for work that day, there’s nothing that says it has to be “yeast-risen bread.” Quick breads are breads, too — you could make baking powder biscuits, or Irish soda bread in the evening when you get home from work.
Or if you want to do something different, make fry bread instead.
Or, honour the day in other ways. If you are a teacher, you may wish to do an activity with children showing them how wheat is ground into flour, or showing them how yeast works. You may wish to visit a bakery, and get to know the people there.
If all else fails, you could pick up a fresh loaf of bread on your way home from work from your local independent bakery, and support them.
#HomemadeBreadDay
History
The earliest print mention we’ve been able to find of Homemade Bread Day occurred in November 1983.
Chapman, Brenda. Ann Lee’s Nursing Home News. Mason County News. Mason, Texas. 30 Nov 1983. Page 4, col. 4.
Sliced homemade bread. BRRT / Pixabay.com / 2016 / CC0 1.0