I grew up in the western part of the United States, at a time that was only about 50 years removed from the rough and tumble years of the early American frontier. I’m a fifth-generation baker, from a long line of strong women who survived and successfully raised families, in what was considered the wilderness of the Great Plains in the latter years of the 19th century and early years of the 20th century. Gammee, my great-grandmother, was truly a renaissance woman, who married late in life and lived and worked independently as a single woman at a time when respectable women married quite young. The family tales of her adventures in Cheyenne, Wyoming in the years when the exploits of the infamous Buffalo Bill were in the eastern newspapers are best left to another day! Born in 1870, Barbara McIntyre was the daughter of a Scottish railroad man and a Swiss mother, living in Nebraska during the pioneering days of early homesteading and ranching. This was still the edge of western expansion in the United States, where living was rustic, and women’s work was never done. Barbara finally agreed to marry her long-time love at the age of 38, after he eventually agreed to stop his hard-drinking ways. Her only daughter, Janice Wills, was my grandmother and first baking teacher. But in her time, Gammee (as Barbara was known in the family—I rarely heard her referred to by her given name) was considered the best cook in western Nebraska. Like all the hard-working women of her era, she daily turned out copious amounts of bread, lamb stew, beef-and-barley soup, and other hearty farm fare from her wood-burning stove. But she was also the first cook in her county to eventually get an electric stove in the early 1900’s. She lived close to her daughter and her family her entire life, teaching my own mother to bake and do needlework—and she passed away just days after my birth. My mother says she waited to die until after she knew if I was a girl or a boy—and I feel blessed by her to be a part of this long line of women bakers.
One of the first things I learned in Gammee’s daughter’s kitchen was to bake yeast breads; a weekly routine that never varied during my years at home. I never ate store-bought bread at my grandmother’s house, and rarely in my mother’s kitchen during my early years—though my mother made a modern concession to slathering margarine on our toast, while my grandmother only toasted our breakfast bread in the oven, with real creamery butter. My mother, an early healthy-eating advocate, only allowed us to eat whole-wheat toast or fresh fruit after school. My own inventive technique for making a slice of toast when I was 12 years old seriously tested my mother’s patience. In the name of convenience, I decided it was quicker to spread margarine on slices of bread BEFORE I popped them into the electric toaster. Thus ruining two toasters before my mother figured out what I was doing. She soon relegated me to baking pans of quick breads that could be eaten warm from the oven, saving her toaster from my after-school experiments. And my favorite breads (after my mother’s family sourdough starter-based French baguettes) were indeed the more interesting “quick” loaves we’d make to serve with soups or just snack on—grainy breads leavened with baking powder or soda that could be whipped up in less than an hour.
The art of making quick-rising breads like biscuits, soda bread, muffins or cornbread is to handle the dough or batter quickly and gently. In fact, the less you do to it, the better the final outcome. And they do not require rising time like yeast breads. Quick breads were first developed in parts of the world that could only grow soft wheat, which, when ground into flour, was not suitable for yeast-leavened loaves. There are two types of quick bread: batter and dough. Both kinds are fast, easy and perfect for beginning bakers. Gammee, Grandmother (the more formal endearment my grandmother Janice liked), and my mother Ferol, all baked these quick breads regularly. Banana bread, prune cakes, gingerbreads, cornbread…every imaginable kind of quick-leavened baked good, from savory to sweet. During this hopefully fleeting time of staying closer to home, one of the top-searched recipes online, surprisingly, is for banana bread—a true nod to home cooks embracing comfort baking at the most intimate level.
