Our Daily Bread

At the time, I was just another traveller on another journey.

Sitting on a connecting flight from Toronto to DC, I felt like the loneliest person in the world. I had just been to see some relatives in Canada and the sudden silence created by my departure sat in stark contrast to the warm of their home. In addition, I had only managed to converse with M for short spurts each night by their rickety modem connection which only served to make me miss her more.

In the seat in front of me, a man whose back was too wide for the backrest began to move around impatiently, producing one of the many ominous cracking noises I was going to endure over the next few hours. The plane had single seats, a single aisle, a single toilet, a single flight attendant and not a single bit of food was served owing to the lack of space for a trolley. An old lady locked herself in the bathroom and hammered away for the better part of five minutes.

In three months, I had been on six planes. The novelty of travelling was fast wearing thin and home was looking good, but too far away.

It was then that I remembered the little parcel my cousin packed for me.

She had brought over some Italian Christmas bread one night and cut a slice for me to bring on the plane in case of the munchies. It was called Panettone, she told me, and was made by an Italian baker to impress the girl he was after. I don’t know if he succeeded, but when I first bit into the slice she gave me, I hoped with all my heart that he had.

Like a giant brioche, it was soft and fluffy without being over moist, and studded with raisins and cranberries. The crust was flaky without being crisp and the bread came apart under my fingers like spun floss. I ate it and suddenly the plane didn’t seem so cold or so empty, the snow-covered landscape down below didn’t look quite so desolate.

Mostly, it was a reminder that somewhere, someone was thinking of me, even when it felt like I was locked away in an airless capsule.


I reached home a few days after a lonely, wet Christmas. Being overseas was great fun, but at Christmas, everybody went back to what family they had and the stores closed on the empty streets. Christmas without friends and loved ones is no Christmas at all and going home made me want to shout and sing and dance in mad circles on the plane.


A whole year later, M and I were wandering in a grocery store when we came upon shelves and shelves of Christmas food – cake soaked in brandy, plum pudding, stollen misted with sugar, cookies iced to look like trees, gingerbread man augmented by cardboard boxes of candy canes and boxes upon stacked boxes of Panettone. Until then, I believed that maybe the bread I had on the plane was one of those things you experience once in your life and end up mistily reminiscing about like that time the tooth fairy left three whole dollars under my pillow.

I marched home with a huge box of Panettone under my arm.

It’s been only two days but I’ve already eaten half the loaf. I eat a slice for breakfast, a piece for lunch and a piece just before I go to bed. I eat it plain or lightly toasted, with little curls of butter melting in the warm hollows. I eat it with tea or milk, feeding crumbs and bits of candied orange and raisin to my dog under the table.

Just the taste of it reminds me of cramped, cold plane flights and the washed out purple and blue seat covers and carpeting. But it also tastes like the realisation of being loved. The salty tang of the butter against the sweet, airy fluff of the bread brings to mind mornings in a cold delifrance with buttered brioche and hot chocolate. Pulling it apart in my fingers recalls eating buns around my grandmother’s kitchen table. Just imagine, a bread that tastes of life and home.

Mainly, it just tastes good.

I suppose what all this really means is that if someone ever tries to create a kind of bread to win your heart, forget all their little flaws for a minute and bear in mind that you’ll be able to whip them into making you bread this good for the rest of your life. That way, you won’t have to wait for Christmas to get one you really like.

Unless of course, they can’t cook.

Then, you have my sympathies. And directions to the nearest Cold Storage.

(image ganked from: http://control.nuvomagazine.com)