Dormant | Easy Wholemeal Spelt bread

The soil was frigid with the trickling snow. The trees were barren with no leaves to show. The bushes laid bare with thorns to prick. The solitary hare disappeared into the morning mist. While she stared at the cold winter shroud. She had sown the seeds by the picket fence. Everyday the wind whispered, days are cold. Why wouldn’t you bloom she questioned her soul. She kept turning the soil over and moistened it with her tears. But there was no sign of green to meet her eye. Then came a tiny chirp from the nearby woods. Hailing the seeds to germinate a new sprout. Oh did you hear the wind sing aloud ‘Its Spring my dear’ come embrace the clouds. The purple tulips have bloomed into the dormant site. Somehow the whole landscape is joyous with flora bright. She looks like a butterfly sucking nectar from the ground. She stops by the tulips and plucks them from the ground. Did she just nip the bud which gave her joy. How lifelessly its adorns the shady corner. life my friend has come a full circle she waited for the seeds to bloom for so long only to burn it down before she went back to bed

Easy Wholemeal Spelt bread

Many a times I felt in life, the routine makes me dormant. My life is a brief span of seasons. I get monotonous with the morning rise, the burnt toast and the tube ride. No matter how effervescent your personality is, boredom sets in. It had been three years since I visited home. The people whose faces I had got used to for the last 15 years. Suddenly they seemed like shadows of the past. Even a distant call doesn’t make the voices alive. A mere reverberation of the obscure din from your subconscious. I couldn’t settle down that’s when I decided to just pack my bags and rush to meet my folks.

Oh! the feeling of meeting them. Its unexplainable. The time goes like wildfire. It enriches your soul and burns away the distance in one go. But what just happened. You cannot encompass your lifetime in a short span. Even before you could go to sleep. Its time to say goodbye. The contradiction lies in the question why such furtive meets ? I took away a few warm hugs and instant captures to adorn my concrete walls. A little wet inside but a complete rational on the outside. As humans we yearn for so many emotions but unattached feelings is something we cannot fathom. You want family, love and care but yet it is a deliberate attempt to unclasp from these holds only to run in the rat race. We will for that matter be hungry forever. In our eternal quest for happiness we always crave for our bread. The bread which nourishes our mind to think work and toil.

Going by christian beliefs, if you are breaking bread you are remembering god. The bread is Lord’s body and we partake Lord’s faith and teachings. Well the modern-day definition of bread is far more complex than known to early man. We are less attached to the spiritual bit but more of its capacity to satiate hunger. My mother made roti (indian bread) kneading and rolling. Slowly smoking and roasting it on both ends. Her fingers got charred occasionally. She would never count her breads. She said there should be abundance and relied on her instinct from over the years to suffice our needs.Her mundane task but the spiritual bit came from the offering to our gods and the lone crow which cawed in our backyard. She said its our ancestors and fed them. That bread was like a prism of the various dimensions of our life.

Today, I am an Escapist when it comes to rolling roti. I have a food processor to knead the dough. My hands are no longer sticky with residual flour. I count as I cook so that I do not cook a wee bit longer. The spares go into the bin. I have a triangle with a one-dimensional view of my life. I haven’t concluded if it’s for the good or bad. I think my mum and I are at different phase of evolution.

The pulse has gone dormant its all about hunger for the bread.In an attempt to activate those dormant instincts. I decided to bake bread from scratch using my fingers. I chose an ancient grain today ‘Spelt‘ which was widely grown in the roman times. It is an ancestor of the modern wheat. Spelt was first mentioned in the book of Ezekiel in the bible. Wholegrain Spelt flour has a delicious complex flavour and is excellent in bread and cookies. Spelt has become mainstream because of its nutritional qualities. So are you ready to spell Spelt correctly. 🙂

I have my Spelt from Fine Food Specialist who have some of the finest and rare ingredients. The New Covent Garden Market-based company sells a variety of delicacies from around the globe and is a great playground for food alchemist like me. Baking bread and cakes at home is a very satisfying and therapeutic.

The smell, knock and the texture of the bread are some the most important qualities of a good bread. My intention was to highlight this through my photography.