Category: Spirituality

Breakfast butterflies, crescent rolls and Fr. Joe

7/26/2012

Last night I mixed up a batch of basic sweet dough so I could make two recipes from the new book. I didn't really need to test the recipes, but I needed some photos for illustrations of Breakfast Butterflies and Crescent Rolls. Butterfly rolls used to be found in most bread cookbooks (I think I saw them first in the 1962 edition of The Joy of Cooking). You roll the dough out as you do for cinnamon rolls and then cut the roll into 9 wedges instead of 12 slices (see above). You can use any filling you want--I used a can of Solo Almond Cake and Pastry Filling, but you could use apricot filling or chopped dates and walnuts. The advantage of almond filling is that the rolls are sweet enough without frosting.
(I should note here in passing that the temperature in the kitchen last night was 99.3 degrees F. My sister Eileen says I'm crazy for even considering baking in this weather, but I don't even notice the heat anymore).

To shape the rolls, you turn each wedge short side up, and press the handle of wooden spoon across each—this pushes the dough outward to form the “wings”. There are other "butterfly roll" recipes out there for which you actually form an insect body complete with antennae, but I think they're a bit too fussy.

They rise and bake pretty much like any other roll (30 minutes or until doubled, 15 to 20 minutes at 350 degrees). They were a hit with the brethren this morning, and so much so that next time I think I'll make a double batch, maybe with two different fillings. Apricot filling would be good with an orange flavored frosting, for example.

I made the second half of the dough into crescent rolls, which are a snap once you get the hang of rolling dough out into a circle. Sincxe my last book was on pizza, that's one skill I have pretty well mastered! A pizza cutter is useful for cutting the wedges, too--far easier than even the sharpest kitchen knife.

After seeing these pictures, I'm surprised that I've never noticed how much crescent rolls look like crabs! Here they are before the second rise. You'll notice that I don't have brand new shiny pans to bake them on, so don't worry if yours are little stained or battered.

I have to say these are some of the most photogenic rolls I've ever made! I think thse are best serve warm with butter and grape jelly, which is how I ate then when my mom made them for us. These came out of the oven about 10:30 p.m. and I had to stay up until all the rolls had cooled completely before wrapping them, so I was up late. But thereby hangs a rather sad tale.

          This whole process took a somewhat longer time than usual, because I kept having to tend to our Fr. Joseph, who is suffering from Alzheimer's. Recently he has been insisting that he is going home to live with his parents in Peoria again (they've been dead for years, and the house he is remembering has been torn down). At least once a day he packs a suitcase or two, or drags boxes to the loading dock, convinced that someone will be coming to pick him up soon. We've had to hide his luggage, because the visual cue of seeing it in his room triggers the obessesion, and we can no longer keep car keys in plain sight for fear he may try to drive himself to Peoria.
          Sometimes it's difficult to divert him from this train of thought, and last night he was particularly determined. It was obvious that he was exhausted, which made him more irritable, like a cranky toddler who needs a nap. Three times he was out of his room and looking for someone to help him find a car, all within the same half hour, and he lost his temper the third time. "Why do I have to put up with this shit?" he shouted at me in the hallway. "Why can't you just take me someplace where there are old things that I understand?!"
          But sadly, no such place exists anymore, except in his memory. Because of his condition, very little makes sense to him anymore, and so he's surrounded by confusion and frustration---no wonder he loses his temper. I finally commented sympathetically on how tired he looked, and he responded to the cue, saying that maybe he should just go to bed and not leave until tomorrow. I helped him to his room and he thanked me for my kindness, all rancor forgotten: "Good night, dear Father," he said, as I closed the door.
          By the time I got to the dough, it was a bit over-risen in the first proof, but bread is forgiving, and caring for my confrere is far more inportant than picture perfect rolls. Like any family coping with an elderly parent or a special needs child, the monastic community is learning once again to do as St. Benedict urges us in his chapter on good zeal: "Bear with the greatest patience one another's weaknesses of body and behavior."

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Period C Bake sale project a success!

4/23/2012

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Our big bake raised $475 for the school in Haiti! The kids worked very hard and were cheerful and cooperatrive throughout the whole process, even when people were mad that we ran out of bread to sell in about 15 minutes! Some photos below.

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Three measures of flour

4/2/2012

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The period C junior religion class and I have undertaken a Lenten fundraiser for this Thursday: we're going to bake 52 loaves of bread and sell them to raise money for a school in Haiti. If you live in the LaSalle-Peru area, we'll be baking and selling at St. Joseph's Parish Hall on Holy Thursday afternoon after 3 p.m., so come buy some fresh whole wheat bread for supper! To understand why we're making 52 loaves, you'll have to read a bit more:

From my book Bake and Be Blessed, second edition, Saint Bede Abbey Press, 2008

          The single instance of a positive view of leavened bread in the Scriptures is the parable of the yeast:

He spoke to them another parable. "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened." Matthew 13:33

      The usual interpretation of the parable is similar to that given for the parable of the mustard seed: that the kingdom of God starts out small and seemingly insignificant, but eventually grows in importance. However, some commentators have suggested that the parables are much more radical, even subversive.[1] In this view, a parable’s purpose is to challenge the religious status quo, such that the core meaning of most of the parables is: “God is not like you thought.” The parable of the yeast would have been especially disturbing to his first century audience. All three of the elements of the analogy---the yeast, the woman, and the amount of flour---would have challenged the theological common sense of the day.[2]

     We have already seen how yeast was often considered a symbol of corruption and decay in Jewish tradition, so it would have been shocking for Jesus’ audience to hear the kingdom of God to be compared to yeast. His implication seems to be that the new principles of the kingdom of God will challenge traditional views about what is pleasing to God.   As we have seen, the Beatitudes and the rest of the Sermon on the Mount seem to bear this out. Jesus calls the poor, the sorrowful, and the persecuted “blessed,” a designation that would have been counter-intuitive for people who were taught that God rewarded the virtuous with material prosperity. Jesus also establishes new principles for discipleship and holiness that go beyond the previous standards of the Mosaic Law. He often prefixed his discussion of a traditional teaching with “You have heard it said . . .” followed by a more demanding precept of right living. Jesus’ association with sinners and fishermen instead of scribes and Pharisees was a clear sign that the kingdom of God that he announced was going to shake things up.

     The second surprise of the parable was the analogy of the activity of God being compared with the homely tasks of a woman. Women in first century Jewish society may have been better off than in some other cultures of the ancient world, but they were still second-rate citizens, considered weak, prone to sin, and in need of the guidance and protection of a father or husband. Throughout the gospels, Jesus is portrayed as treating women with extraordinary respect and compassion. But the parable goes further in depicting the woman as an agent of the kingdom, in her own sphere of influence. This more positive view of women is expressed most fully in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

     The amount of flour is the most surprising element of the parable, which is not entirely evident in most English translations. “Three measures” is the usual translation for the original Greek “tria sata” which is a little over a bushel of flour (1.125 bushels, to be precise). That’s a ridiculously large amount of flour---you’d need a 100-quart Hobart mixer with a dough hook as big as your leg to knead it! Translating into kitchen measures, 1.125 bushels is 144 cups of flour. Presuming we used a common recipe for basic white bread that uses 5 ½ cups of flour, 144 cups is enough to make 26 batches of bread of two loaves each, giving us a total of 52 loaves, each weighing about a pound and a half. If we’re frugal but not stingy, we can get 16 slices out of a loaf, yielding 832 slices, enough for 416 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (we’d need 33 jars of jelly, and 64 of peanut butter).

     What’s the message of the story? It’s simple: The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who wants to do more than feed her family. The kingdom announced by Jesus is like a woman who wants to feed the village. The kingdom of God is like a woman who wants to feed the world. The kingdom is for everybody.

[1] For a more complete analysis of the parables as radical stories, see Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed, William R. Herzog II (Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, KY 1994).

[2] Although other commentators have written similar analyses, my first encounter with such an interpretation of the parable of the yeast was in “Preaching the Parables of Jesus” (Church, Winter 1992; pp. 19-24) by Dr. Richard Stern.

So tonight I did a little test bake (not that I needed to test anything really---just felt like baking!) and got beautiful samples. Hope our loaves come out as well on Thusday. Come join us at St. Joe's in Peru IL after 3 p.m. and find out!

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Plain white bread . . .

3/10/2012

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That's what I made this morning: ordinary, plain white bread. Nothing fancy in the recipe, unless you count the Saint Bede honey I used for a little sweetening. Otherwise, it was just water, yeast, flour, salt and canola oil. I didn't even use bread flour or add gluten powder, just pulled out the bin of all-purpose flour and mixed up six loaves worth before morning prayer. The dough was marvelously smooth and easy to shape, and crusts turned evenly browned, no small trick in our mid-20th century vintage ovens. But they're not head-turningly gorgeous--a photo would not even be blog worthy.
And that's a good thing, I think---appropriately Lenten in their simplicity, ordinary enough not to call attention to themselves, nor to me. Monastic loaves, you might call them, which implies that their simplicity conceals a deeper meaning. The Benedictine way is a domestic spirituality, in which the ordinary things of life are meant to be charged with meaning. So ordinary plain white bread is also a symbol of my love for the community, a reminder of the multiplication of the loaves and the manna in the wilderness, a preparation for the Eucharist we will celebrate this afternoon, and an anticipation of the eternal Supper of the Lamb that awaits us.

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On NOT baking

3/7/2012

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    Thanks to the spring musical, I haven't had a free evening for baking in almost two weeks and it's starting to take its toll on my mental health. It's not as though working with the Stage Rats is without its own rewards, and working alone late at night after they leave also has some spiritual benefits. But as much as I love the smell of sawdust, it can't compare with the aroma of caramel pecan cinnamon rolls or tomato basil focaccia or even just sourdough starter.   As I wrote in Bake and Be Blessed, bread baking is the original aromatherapy, but better because you can't eat a lighted candle.
            Of course, kneading dough is also therapeutic, in part because it involves some fairly vigorous physical effort, and because of the kind of tactile sensuality of the dough itself. There's a distinct pleasure in feeling the warm dough dough go from slightly lumpy, slack and sticky to smooth and elastic.   It's a transformation that never fails to enchant me, and makes me fall in love with baking all over again.
           There's a communal aspect of baking that I've been missing lately as well: I genuinely enjoy putting bread on the table for my confreres. I like choosing a recipe I know is a community favorite, or perhaps trying something new I think will surprise and delight my monastic family. I like seeing each monk choosing thick or thin slices, waiting in line for the toasters at breakfast, spreading butter and honey or raspberry jam. I especially enjoy seeing an empty bread board covered with crumbs, except for when I'm late to breakfast and have to make do with store-bought bread!
        Truth be told, I'm also feeling some guilt about not baking. Last year I offered an item in our Academy's annual dinner auction: bread every time I bake. One of our school families bought it, and although they've gotten plenty of bread and rolls this year, I feel as though they're not getting their money's worth recently. Guess I'll have to take part of Saturday morning to rectify that, both for their sake and mine.

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Pizza and Herbs

2/28/2012

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I recently made pizza for the local council of the Knights of Columbus (for which I am chaplain) and made two discoveries:
1) Italian Beef Pizza with sautéed veggies is also REALLY good using Cajun Beef and a couple dashes of Louisiana Hot Sauce.
2) Velouté sauce, lightly cooked chopped asparagus, and diced lemon pepper chicken (left over from monk supper) topped with baby Swiss makes a great combo, too.

Tonight I gave a talk on Monastic Herb Gardens to the Ottawa Garden Club, which reminded me that I forgot to post about an exciting new project: an herb guild from the Chicago suburbs is coming to make an overnight Herb Retreat with me in June. Our high school has two buildings for our boarding students that aren't used in the summer and they are perfect for this sort of thing. They are going to arrive on a Saturday monring, get a tour of the abbey gardens and grounds, eat a light lunch on the patio of the west garden by the koi pond, and then have some time for prayer, reflection, journaling, walks or naps. In the late afternoon we'll have a pizza dough making session and create some herbal sauces for our pizza supper, and after eating join the monks for evening prayer. Sunday morning we'll do a lectio divina exercise (after a multigrain sourdough waffle breakfast accompanied by scrambled eggs with an herb sauce and a fruit medley), attend conventual Mass, and finish off with a lunch of spring salad greens, homemade Italian Wedding Soup and crusty bread. The main benefit for the retreatants, of course, is being away from the city on 800 acres of beautiful grounds and woods. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this first one goes, because I suspect I could book several for the summer.

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Fat Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and the reason we do Lent

2/22/2012

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Just about every European ethnic group has special foods for Fat Tuesday. The Poles serve jelly-filled fried donuts called paczki (singular paczek ) and rozie karnawalowe, carnival rosettes made of pastry with sweet fillings. The Germans have their own fried donuts called Fasnacht, as a way to empty the pantry of lard, sugar, fat, and butter, which were traditionally fasted from during Lent. The French serve their crepes, which Fr. Arthur’s French students make in class every year on Mardi Gras and deliver to the faculty. Russians make bliny: yeasted pancakes made with buckwheat flour and eaten with savory fillings, and the Finns make Shrove buns, almond paste and whipped cream-filled sweet buns similar to Cornish splits.
        My preference is to make waffles for Mardi Gras breakfast, a tradition found in several cultures but in this country most popular in Episcopal churches, especially in New England---a Shrove Tuesday Pancake and Waffle Supper is a common fundraiser advertized in church bulletins. Here at Saint Bede Abbey, throughout the rest of the year I usually make multigrain sourdough waffles with canola oil, which have as much fiber as raw twine and are about as healthy as you can get for a food generally drenched in butter and syrup. But for Shrove Tuesday, I made my grandma's old fashioned waffles, using butter, lots of eggs, white sugar and not a whole grain anywhere in the batter.
        But after the Carnival, Lent ever follows, so today begins the forty days of fast and abstinence observed with some rigor here at the monastery. Healthy monks are expected to fast every day, with a small amount of food (or none) at breakfast and lunch, with the main meal (the only one with meat, except on Fridays) at supper in the evening. Tonight's meatless chili was actually quite good and very filling, with cornbread on the side and fresh fruit for dessert.  However, right now it's 10 p.m. and I am ravenously hungry. Normally I would go down to the kitchen and see if there's leftover cornbread to be had, but I'm restraining my base appetites.
        And that's really why we do Lent, at least in my view. You can talk all you want about penance for our sins (and just about every Catholic writer has!) but none of this fasting and abstinence stuff will "earn" us forgiveness. Lest uninformed readers think I've gone over to the Lutheran side of the "faith vs. works" debate of the Reformation, let me assure you that faithful Catholics and Lutherans are in agreement on this point----check the Catechism! (You might also look up the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.)
        So why all the fuss over giving things up for Lent? First, it's a way of demonstrating one's monotheism---we show that food, entertainment, Facebook, etc., are not idols, that they are not more important than following Christ. But more importantly, our ascetical practices are a way of disciplining our appetites, so that we can open up a space of hospitality around us. If I restrain my appetites for food and drink and other legitimate pleasures, then little by little I lose the need to get my own way all the time. That means that when I encounter others, they're less likely to be "eaten", that is, to be used for my own pleasure or treated as objects.
        So during Lent we discipline our bodies and our wills in order to free ourselves from selfishness, so that we may more readily attend to the needs of others. By restraining our unruly appetites for food, comfort, and other legitimate pleasures, we create a space for hospitality, so that we can eagerly welcome Jesus in whatever form he chooses to come.

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Forward>>

Breakfast butterflies, crescent rolls and Fr. Joe

Period C Bake sale project a success!

Three measures of flour

Plain white bread . . .

On NOT baking

Pizza and Herbs

Fat Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and the reason we do Lent

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