When in Doubt, Bake Bread

As a child, I learned a great deal from my grandmother. She was, of course, a true mistress of the house and knew how to bake wonderful bread, but for some reason she never actually taught me that particular art. What she did do was repeat two key phrases often, and they’ve stayed etched in my memory for life. Every Soviet child knew the first one: “Bread is the head of everything.” But the second was her own, personal, family wisdom: “In any unclear situation, my dear, bake bread.”

That very “unclear situation,” on a planetary scale, arrived for all of us in the Covid year, during the long lockdown. There was absolutely nothing to do, cooped up indoors, anxiety hung in the air, and I instinctively remembered my grandmother’s teaching. And I started baking.

Since then, it’s become my personal meditation, a way to bring balance and peace back to the Home. I experimented a lot: I baked elaborate loaves on live sourdough starter, fragrant malt bread, light yeast-free protein bread… And to this day, whenever life’s rhythm falls out of step, I return to my oven.

Today, a special, very wholesome protein bread is cooling on our kitchen counter — made from lentils and ripe pumpkin, generously topped with seeds. A small, neat little loaf, which, with its golden color and mind-blowing aroma, confidently tells the whole Home: whatever is happening outside the windows, everything will be fine in here.

Next to the bread, on a lace napkin, lies an elegant antique fork with an ivory handle. If you turn it over and look closely at the silver ferrule ring at the base of the tines, you can make out a clear Edwardian hallmark from the early 20th century: STERLING SILVER.

This Sheffield fork, from our family’s collection of silverware, was made more than a century ago for prim and proper English dinners. But in this Home, antique objects don’t gather dust behind museum glass — they live full, active lives, and they work. Today, this fork is serving homemade pumpkin bread with the same dignity, linking eras and traditions, and reminding us of the main thing: in our space, every object has its own living, continuing story.