Starting Over

Today I made bread for the first time here in Seoul. It’s been a while since I’ve made bread, at least six months. I have been making bread since I was a senior in high school when my Aunt Diane taught me how to do it. There are a lot of things about making bread that I love: the smell of the wheat, the feel of the dough, the warmth of the house while it’s baking. I find it very rewarding to bake bread. I usually feel satisfied when I pack my baked bread away into bread bags and then into the cupboard or freezer. A good friend of mine once told me, “if you do something enough, it becomes so easy to do—it’s like falling off a log”. Well, I think I was about to that point with my bread making….until, I moved here. I have postponed my first bread making experience for fear that maybe I won’t be able to make bread here and I am going to have to admit that to myself. A fear that that part of me and many other parts of me can’t exist here in Seoul. Today I faced that fear and made my bread.
When I left Chicago, I had a 50 pound bucket of wheat that I left in the trash because the moving company wouldn’t include it in my shipment and I didn’t know what to do with it. So many times since I’ve been here in Seoul, I’ve thought about my bucket of wheat in the garbage. What a tragedy. And so, from day one in Seoul I have been on a quest to find wheat. Like many of God’s blessings, my wheat found me, I didn’t find it. A woman from my church was moving back to the states and she invited me to clean out her pantry. In her pantry was a 5 pound bag of whole wheat. I smiled and took it home where I packed it carefully into my cupboard waiting for the courage to attempt my bread. I think my biggest fear of making my bread was my “oven”. It’s a glorified microwave, really. It’s the size of a microwave with a round rotating tray. It has three different modes: microwave, grill, and convection oven. All of the buttons are in Korean and so is the owner’s manual. For the last six weeks I have experimented with some success and a lot of failure with the little oven. Like many other aspects of my life, my quest to “figure out the oven” has been a study in optimism, innovation and endurance; marked by an occasional triumph and many failures. The bread? It got a little burnt on the outside (a common dilemma of mine with the convection mode and converting Celsius to Fahrenheit) and one loaf stuck to the pan...UUugh. But, I discovered that it is possible to have homemade bread in Seoul and I can make it, if I’m willing to put forth a little bit more effort. It is frustrating to feel like I am relearning my life all over again, just when I felt like a well-oiled machine, but like another good friend once told me, “We never arrive”. So, here’s to my journey, and hot bread and honey.