Love Making: The Bakers Way
Sitting down to enjoy the "Love Bread"
As Americans, we typically take many things for granted. Time and convience are often the factors we look at in the decisions we make instead of quality and tradition. In traditonal cypriot culture, this is not the case.
Today we embarked on our first video shoot to film a cypriot woman who has been baking for almost all of her life. Before she took the reigns of the family tradition, her mother was kneading her love into the sacred dough. Jessica and I were the ones choosen to experience cypriot tradition and bake with a lady we had never met and could not understand. At first, the little old lady would stare at us due to the language barrier that imposed the two cultures. But as time went on, she opened up and let us experience the craft in which she has devoted her lfie to perfecting.
I could not help but appreciate the love and devotion she puts into every loaf of bread. First, she starts out by making the dough homemade. She adds flour, water and yeast to help the dough rise all into a large mixer. Next, she proceeds to mix some of the herbs and toppings on the table so that the bread can have some flavor. The next part is where both Jessica and I seemed to struggle: the kneading of the bread.
We finally were able to participate and get our hands doughy. From a spectators glance, I personally thought this would be a piece of cake. Wow was I wrong.. The bread that Jessica and I seemed to form was a hysterical embarssement to my confident demeanor that I possesed when taking on the challenge from a seasoned professional.
After laughs were being exchanged from one culture to the other, we moved on to putting the bread into the stone ovens. In Cyprus in the month of June, average tempertures range from 93 to 100 degrees fahrenheit. The open faced ovens made the room feel as if we were stuck in the Sahara Desert. Due to the fact that I was being shot on camera, we needed to dress up and look the part (you will understand if you see the final product). I was wearing a long-sleeved button down shirt and kacki dress pants. Most likely I lost about three pounds on that day. But I had too push on and wanted to get even further intertwined by helping her acutally bake the bread. So I decided to grab a wooden pole with a metal pizza looking sheet at the end, and put bread in and out of the oven. The stick was not light and puzzled me as to how this little old woman could put and take out 96 loaves of bread each time. This showed the dedication this woman had for her trade.
As we wrapped up the shoot, she came out with a loaf of freshly cooked hot out of the oven bread. We tried to get her to sit down and act like we were breaking bread around a table, but even then her giving spirit would not allow her to sit down until she had offered bread to each person. This sums up the average cypriot person that we have met. Here in Cyprus, it is not about how much you make or the other things you could be doing with your time, it is about doing something you love and making both yourself and other happy. If there is one thing that I can take from this experience it would be that I need to find something to do in my life as much as this woman loves to bake bread. As she told Jessica and I, you will not be good at what you do if you do not put love into it. This token of knowledge will be one of the moments I forever keep and take home with me.