So what about our "daily bread"?

Exploring the meaning of “daily bread” in our lives at the beginning of the 21st Century.

Make bread and have time to re-connect with food making and the place of “daily bread” in Christian Spirituality

A short history of bread making

Humanity’s relationship with bread goes back to times before recorded history. From early beginnings of roasting grain the flavour and texture were improved by cooking with water. From such gruel or porridge it was only a short step to baking the gruel on hot stones around a fire producing the early ancestor of the Mexican tortilla and the Indian chapatti.

Such easy quick-bake bread suited the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our early ancestors. Today in cultures still closely associated with nomadic roots such flat breads are the usual type of bread.

When farming and settled communities developed the early farmers applied the techniques they had used to breed domestic dogs and horses to breeding better seeds, developing grain crops recognisable to us today. Wheat and barley were well known by the time of the ancient Egyptians. By 2600BC they had cracked the use of yeast or leaven and invented the bread oven. Pictures and descriptions in their tombs tell us that they had mastered over 30 types of bread, all made with flour, water, salt and yeast.

The rest of the history of bread and bread-making is really just a big “p.s.” to what the Egyptians achieved!

Bread; there is more to it than meets the eye or fills the tummy!

Life in Bible times was hazardous, food was precious and time spent on producing it could take a big chunk out of the day. Bread was an essential of life

“The basis of life is water and bread and clothing and a home to cover ones nakedness.” (Ecclesiaticus 29:21)

During this series of posts we hope to have great fun encouraging you to make some great bread, move beyond the mechanics of bread and bread-making and make some connections between this age old part of our human nature and our spirituality.

We will look at the basic ingredients of bread and the processes involved in making bread.

We will delve a bit deeper into the significance of bread in our lives and re-discover the joy and pleasure making and sharing bread.

We will look at the place of bread in the Jewish/Christian tradition and make connections with the concerns of ecology, sustainability family and community life.

So why "slow cook theology"? Well, theology, like food itself can be fast, pre-packed, bottled, preserved, in the deep freeze or slowly cooked.

All sorts of food will feed you. A fast food snack will give you energy, but it won't be a memorable eating experience that shapes and changes your way of life. Slow cook theology is expressed thinking about the relationship between people, the physical world and God that has had time to mature. think about it in this way. A fast food burger for example is flash grilled at speed and put in a bun or bap with other stuff - salad, sauce added. Although the flavours will\mix in your mouth they are still distinct flavours. Slow cook theology, like slow cooked food has time to take up the best in the flavour in the ingredients around it, is a slow thought process that listens to other voices and insights and allows them to enhance the main dish!

The first "slow cook meals" from the Haybox Theologian will have an ecological flavour. Speaking of which I now need to go and cook my own lunch!