I am a farm wife; I am required to make homemade bread, right?

Whether you agree or disagree, I, myself, want to make bread. I want to make really, really good bread. I want to make really, really good bread from scratch. And buns, too. I just need a lot more practice. I remember eating sloppy joe’s (or “slushburgers” if you’re from western ND) on my grandma’s homemade buns, and J’s grandma makes homemade buns and bread, too. J’s mom made really good buns. Like, Texas Roadhouse good… only better. She would make dozens of “harvest buns,” then freeze them so they could be enjoyed all throughout the fall.

J’s family’s bun recipe comes with a story. The recipe is meant to be used with a Bosch mixer, which J’s mother distributed. The last time I talked to her, she called to tell me that I, too, would be receiving a Bosch and was wondering if I would prefer the traditional one or the limited-edition red color. She was excited about the flashy red, so she ordered enough to give to her daughters and me. Although she wasn’t there, I still received the Bosch at my bridal shower as she intended. Soon, all of her daughters will be married and have their own Bosch mixers.

The bun recipe in their family cookbook clearly states directions, like “mix on speed 1 for 5 minutes” and “let the Bosch knead the dough for 10 minutes.” Seems pretty basic and fool-proof, right? At first glance, it seems like a recipe that you can pick up and try on your own for the first time.

But, it doesn’t say anything about how you’ll need to add more flour or water depending on the humidity that day, or how to carefully shape the dough into buns, or how you can fill the sink with hot water and put the covered pan of buns on top of it to let them rise, or how to brush the buns with a sugar mixture when they’re fresh out of the oven to give them a sweet glaze, or how it is the most fun when you have all day to enjoy the task at hand with family while chatting and drinking coffee and letting the kids form their own little snowmen-shaped buns so they can help, too.

It is a process that can only be learned by partaking in the experience with the experts themselves. I am hoping it is a process of trial and error that I will perfect after years of experience.

Usually, when I try baking buns on my own, I end up having an overgrown yeast disaster, because I walk away and forget about it until I see the dough crawling out of the Bosch mixer and spreading across the countertop. Then I have a terrible time forming them into buns, and finally, when they’re done baking, they end up being little bricks that could give a black-eye better than any hockey puck.

One day my husband told me, “[sigh] Jill, I wish you could make buns as good as-“ then he caught himself because he knew what he was saying wasn’t going to make me feel any better!  So, I’ve given up on buns for now (except for that perfect little bun I baked, named “Lucas”) and focused my expertise on bread-making instead.

For our wedding favors, we decided to bake mini loaves of bread using J’s family’s recipe. We originally intended to grind flour from the wheat grown by my husband, but that was early in the wedding-planning stages and you know how time slips away. We baked hundreds of buns and tied them with a verse from a song played at our wedding:

As grains of wheat are gathered in, we’ve come together.
From lives apart, we bring our hearts to make one whole.

How appropriate for a post-harvest wedding of a wheat farmer, don’t you think?

At another one of my bridal showers, I received two identically embroidered towel sets from each of my grandmothers, which come in handy for covering the rising dough. It was funny that they each chose the same exact gift and the same exact pattern on the towels. That, too, must be a western ND thing! Now, the towels aid in my bun-baking “practices” to be perfected hopefully SOON!