Is there anything better than homemade bread fresh from the oven spread with real butter melting on contact? Here’s a hint. No.

I volunteered to bring the bread to our extended family’s Resurrection Day feast following church services a few days from now. I decided to practice this time. One time I depended on the recipe of an old friend that left out the amount of flour. How off could I guess? Enough is as good a word as any. Those were some heavy rolls. Good times.

I pulled a cookbook from my shelves in which the authors breathlessly extol the virtues of artisan bread. They had me at “bread is better than cake”. I began by making the master recipe which is then used to make artisan bread in 5 minutes a day. It’s not really 5 minutes. You grab as much dough as you want to use from the master recipe, shape it, and let it rise before you bake it at 450. It was delicious!

The next day, since I didn’t see a recipe in the book for plain ol’ rolls, I guessed (old habits die hard). The rolls were also very good. I might just have a winner!

This is a time of year when the importance of bread is front and center. We recall it during Communion, what is often called The Last Supper, which was actually a Passover meal. Jesus had celebrated that meal all of his life, and it was during that meal that Jesus took the unleavened bread, thanked God for it, broke it, and shared it. He said, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” It was a pretty extreme statement, I’ll grant you; but Jesus was making a connection for them. And us. The bread eaten was originally to help recall the Israelites’ hurried escape from captivity. I can think of a few things I’d like to escape from just now. I bet you can, too. But that last meal showed that what was going to happen was bigger even than that. Much bigger. Much, much, much.

Another time Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Imagine never being hungry or thirsty. Never! He is spirit food. No, I’m not speaking of cannibalism. Satanists do that – probably some folks you’d recognize on TV, for instance. No, I’m speaking of Jesus voluntarily laying down His life as a sacrifice in order to redeem us from hell and the sin that leads us there. Do we understand how precious that was? Really?

Bread. It’s life-giving in oh so many ways; not just physically. And it’s available world-wide! But it’s important to use the master recipe in order to get the result you’re hoping for. You cover it and put it in a dark place where it rises, and the result is amazing.

Here’s a hint. It’s not really about bread. It’s about Jesus.

Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg, MD, and Zoe Francois, Thomas Dunne Books of St. Martin’s Press, c 2009; Scripture: Luke 22:19; John 6:35