More on Bread

My last post brought to mind this great passage from the introduction to the Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book (the authors of which are not Mormon) about the wheat kernel:

"There it sits- a single kernel of wheat, maybe three sixteenths of an inch long, creased along one side and rounded on the other. At the bottom nestles a tiny oval compartment, the minute beginning of the plants rebirth, called the germ. Above the germ is the endosperm, a protein- and calorie-rich food reservoir that will fuel the plant as it germinates. Enveloping both is a hard seed coat, impermeable for decades to anything but the warmth and moisture that will bring the seed to life."

"What's so marvelous about this simple structure is that everything that helps the grain preserve and reproduce itself also suits the needs of human beings and animals superbly well. It comes close to being a complete food, needing to be supplemented only by small amounts of animal products and/or legumes, and the leafy green and yellow vegetables that almost any environment between the polar caps will provide in some form. The same hard seed coat that protects the seed's capacity to reproduce itself has also made possible for humankind the almost indefinitely long storage of a wholesome food supply."

Still with me? Here's the part that made me cry, yes, cry the first time I read it:

"There are those who can look on this kind of arrangement and keep their wits about them. There are others who can't conceive of it as anything but a sure, small sign of some larger benevolence, hidden deep behind the appearance of things- and who feel, too, that nothing could be more fitting in response than to summon up all that is skilled and artful in themselves to bake a fine, high-rising loaf of uncompromisingly whole-grain bread."