Domestic joys

This afternoon I felt a sudden and inexplicable urge to bake some bread. All the more sudden and inexplicable since I haven't done it for ages. At least for twenty years.

In my childhood in Russia, baking your own bread wasn't common. Bread was good and cheap. In our family we baked pies, cakes, buns, cookies, but never bread. When I came to Sweden many of my - or Staffan's - friends made their own bread which I first thought was weird, but eventually started doing myself. It was a good way of doing something with the kids, and it had wide room for imagination, with spices, fruit, various sorts of flour. I used to bake a different kind of bread every week, freeze and thus have a variety. Then I guess I got too busy. You get out of habit if you don't do it regularly. When I took up a lot of hobbies some five-six years ago - gardening, pottery, paper-making - baking wasn't among them. I don't know why. I used to knit a lot, and I haven't done it for years, except for a jumper that I started to knit for a granddaughter and didn't finish intil it was too small for her, so it went to her little suster. As I say: you get out of habit.

Anyway, I cannot explain what possessed me this afternoon. Not that I haven't enough to keep me busy. It's sunny and warm and there is plenty to do in the garden. But I couldn't help it. Fortunately, I had flour and yeast left from when I made saffron buns for Christmas. Ahhh, the feeling of dough in your hands!

The irony of it is that Staffan and I don't eat bread.