Breaking (Baking) Bread (Pizza Crust)

We broke bread on Saturday. Actually we made pizza dough/crust but I like the sound of saying breaking bread and all the connotations that go along with that. The sense of community and the connection with each other. The images of warmth and family and the secrets in conversation that settles throughout the meal. The sharing of sustenance that is not just in the food and the winding down of time because the preparing of the food takes time. And so this, the making of pizza dough crust was a breaking of bread in that true form.

​We met with Richard Bourdon of Berkshire Mountain Bakery. If you live in the Berkshires and have not yet discovered all the yummy breads and crusts, sweets and soups that you can find at this really cool place in Housatonic, then you need to get yourself on over there and check it out. It is good stuff. As is Richard. Good stuff. Good stock. Good man. And smart.

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We found ourselves with Richard, his friend V, me and my mom and my dad, because my dad bid on a "baking party for four" when he was at the 2015 Berkshire Grown Harvest Supper. Berkshire Grown supports local food and farms. And so my dad bid, and won and then, about a year later, here we were...the three of us for this baking party for four. 

It wasn't really so much a baking party as a lesson in food and health and well-being intermingled with making pizza crust. And working hard.

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Seriously! Richard put us to work. After all the kneading of the dough that we started from scratch and the conversation around enzymes and digestion and mold and protein and carbohydrates and fasting and eating and the sharing of some yummy bits of dark chocolate that Richard keeps in this HUGE box and which I would likely finish in a day or two if it were mine, we took these already make crusts that were sitting in their trays and we pounding them very gently and moved them back and forth from fist to fist to expand their size and lay them down all organized and ready, and dripped a bit of oil on each so that they would not rise too much in the oven and then we baked them. Like one hundred of them. ONE HUNDRED!

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One of them, it just did not do what it was supposed to...or maybe it was one of us who did not...but it would not turn into a nice and round ready to be baked pizza crust, so I turned it into a heart. So actually I think it did become exactly what it was supposed to. It became love. And it was delicious!