There is nothing quite like the smell of bread baking in the oven. My wife made a challah, a braided egg-enriched bread, the other day. Throughout our house, I felt enveloped by the bouquet of baking dough. It's more than just an aroma wafting through the house. I think it’s also the heat and moisture that made for this very cozy, sensory experience. Nostalgia doesn’t overwhelm me. My heritage does not include homemade bread. Bread came from the grocery store my family owned. I cannot recall my mother ever baking bread, except heat n’ serve Parker House rolls, when I was a kid growing up.
But there’s something about baking bread. The scent of soup steeping on the stove doesn’t do it. Sautéing onions and green peppers in a cast iron pan smells great . . . initially and then becomes a piercing odor as the ingredients caramelize.
During the holidays, there are lots of wonderful aromas from great cooking and baking going on in homes across America. Women and men pull out old family recipes from their box, dust them off, try to remember the previous year’s adaptations, and use them once again. Traditional family recipes make the holidays special. Each year, daring amateur chefs and cooks create new traditions by choosing to introduce new recipes to prepare traditional holiday foods.
Okay, Norman Rockwell’s classic illustrations influence my imagination.
With little exception, most holiday meal preparers adapt recipes to their tastes, some making handwritten notations on the printed page or computer printout. You might say they personalize them for their family and guests, adding another treasure, especially if it tastes exceptionally good, to the family’s trove.
Family, good food, caring friends, and the time to enjoy them are the components of great holiday memories. We document our heritage by keeping those memories through stories and photographs that capture the uniqueness of our experiences.
Sadly, every year families lose significant portions of their heritage because of fires and natural disasters. After every fire and flood, residents who say that they lost everything are most heartbroken by the loss of the pictures. As you look toward the end of the year and starting 2011 with a set of New Year’s resolutions, consider an easy one. Create digital files of the things that are important to you, store them in a safe location outside your home, and begin backing up your computer files on a regular basis.
Need some ideas about how and where to get started? Visit www.OurHeritageVault.com for a list of thing important things to consider, including your favorite bread recipe. And if you don’t have a favorite recipe for bread yet, try this one: http://www.howcast.com/videos/265122-How-To-Make-Challah-Bread
