Kitchen Aid

This is something I never do: stand in the kitchen with a stick of half-melted butter on the counter, loaf of warm bread on the cooling rack with steam above and crumbs accumulating below, knife in hand balancing a big glob of yellowy fat on the tip then jettisoning it onto nearby slice of soft pillowy cooked grain that was a sticky mess an hour ago.
Sticky mess. That is probably my intestines after three rounds of dimly-lit-kitchen butter-spreading.
I never do that. But tonight, I did it. Because I made spelt bread from scratch.
Ground grain, yeast, honey, salt, and water.

This is something I do but don't like to admit to: I turn it on. I go in the other room, go about my business, and I listen to the whir.

I love the sound of a KitchenAid kneading dough.

I know, I know, it is therapeutic to hand knead your dough. Meditative even. It makes you strong. That's how the farmer's wives used to do it. That is the "way it should be done." I am usually all about getting my arms elbow deep into foodstuff, oil or kale or mashed avocados or sticky sweet spelt dough clinging to freckled wrists, but these wrists hurt from actual manual labor that occurs with growing things (aka farming).

So tonight, tonight we pull the shiny KitchenAid out from her corner, nestle the bowl onto metal nubs, gently push the spring loaded kneading attachment into place.
She is ready to make bread.
One by one ingredients slide down the side of the stainless steel and bubble and froth in all sorts of warm yeasty ways. Powder churns into honey colored liquid and a globular form dances with the swirly spinning attachment.
I come in every few minutes to check on her, check to see if more flour is needed or if that whapping sound means Too Fast!
Soon there is a stretchy little ball ready to be sequestered beneath a tea towel in an oily good loaf pan. Rise and rise and rise and into the oven only to be yanked back out (lovingly) 40 minutes later when the smell of fresh baked bread wafts from the kitchen.

This is something I do and wish I didn't: Go back for that fourth slice.

I may not have benefited from the theraputic value of kneading but there is nothing more simple and soothing than buttered bread on a cool winter night.

My kind of therapy: Butter, honey, eat.