Why bread therapy could be what you need to get through a second lockdown
If there have been any winners in this pandemic, the nation’s purveyors of bread flour have surely achieved gold, silver and bronze medals. During lockdown, British millers were producing twice the amount of flour for home baking than they were before the pandemic, doubling their output from two million 1.5kg bags a week to four million as people frantically channeled their anxiety into homemade loaves. For some, the lockdown bread obsession was merely a ramping up of an already well-loved hobby. For others it was a new challenge - something to distract a worried mind.
Much has been written over the past few years about the way we have fallen back in love with making and eating proper bread. Millennials are routinely accused of having made bread elitist with their penchant for £4.50 sourdough. Meanwhile possessing a lively sourdough starter is considered a badge of honour and the subject of many a viral Instagram account. But at the root of the Great Bread Resurgence is something altogether more soulful and vital, as Pauline Beaumont knows better than most.
Beaumont is a counsellor and bread enthusiast whose book, Bread Therapy (out now), explores the healing powers of bread baking. Her manifesto is simple: “Slow down. Make bread. Live better.” Beaumont believes firmly that though modern life can be chaotic, fractured and anxiety-filled (even when we aren’t living through a pandemic), if we can carve out moments in the day when we focus entirely on something that isn’t a screen, we might just be able to achieve some sense of calm. It’s no surprise, she says, that bread making has seen such a resurgence in lockdown. “In times of stress it’s even more important that we are aware of the sort of activities that we can do that will be soothing and grounding and that will contribute to our mental health,” she tells me over Zoom from her home in Northumberland.
We might all have experienced a certain amount of “slowing down” in the past few months thanks to lockdown, but that doesn’t mean our minds haven’t been racing. “The speed that matters is what’s going on in our heads,” says Beaumont. “If we’re having a distressing time, we need to have some capacity to regulate our emotions and bring them back down to a manageable level.
“[We need to find] things that are soothing and grounding. Baking bread, getting our hands into some dough, can really help us with that. And as well as the physical experience, I think there is something special about bread.”
For Beaumont, the magic of bread baking is that it’s one of the few remaining tasks in life that requires your undivided attention. You can’t be scrolling through Twitter, texting someone or replying to an email while your hands are in a bowl of dough. “There are so few things now that we do one at a time,” she says. “We’re so used to being overstimulated and typing one thing and listening to another thing and watching something else.
“Being forced to slow down, to have boundaries and limits to when we stop doing one thing and start doing another, is actually massively important.”
Beaumont worked in the arts for 20 years before being made redundant and retraining as a counsellor. A busy working mother-of-six, she first started baking bread at a frenetic time in her life and the repetitive pattern and soothing routine became increasingly important. “I was very, very busy, and living too much in my head as so many of us do, and I could just remember having this really quite fundamental urge to make something,” she recalls.
“I wanted to make something with my hands. I wanted to do something practical. And I alighted on bread making as a thing I was going to try, without understanding how significant it would become for me.”
Beaumont bakes bread three times a week, often a multigrain loaf with “a fairly random mix of flour - spelt, wholemeal, a little unbleached white, and big handfuls of sunflower and pumpkin seeds”. “If I didn’t do it I’d feel the absence of it. It’s something that I would say has just become part of my self care routine. Over the last six months I’ve been so glad to have had that.
“It never stops being exciting to me when I take a loaf out of the oven because you never quite know how it’s going to turn out. I suppose that’s the real significant metaphor of bread making. Starting with this inedible powder and ending up with this delicious loaf of bread.”
She finds the sourdough makers of Instagram strangely competitive. It’s all very “my bubbles are bigger than yours”. A white sourdough is a lovely thing, she says, and white flour is essential to achieve some good air bubbles, but “the nourishment you get from wholemeal is wonderful and it tastes so good”.
An imperfect loaf (which, incidentally, was at one point going to be the title of her book) is just as valid as an Instagram-worthy one, says Beaumont, who believes baking mishaps are all part of the holistic power of bread baking. “Bread making often goes wrong, it’s normal to have a loaf stuck to the tin or be raw in the middle,” she says. “It gives us good practise at accepting imperfection. That stands us in good stead for accepting imperfections in ourselves, in our own lives, and that in itself is an important stepping stone to becoming more self-compassionate, which is very important for our mental health.”
Beaumont is adamant that bread making shouldn’t be yet another excuse to set ourselves unrealistic goals and beat ourselves up when we don’t meet them. “Social media provides the perfect medium through which to do that, which can make it quite unhealthy,” she says.
“The imperfect loaf stands for the imperfect life we all live. Probably one of the most important things I’ve derived from making bread is that change is always possible, and it’s ok to be imperfect.”
Beaumont works at the University of Newcastle, and has spent much of lockdown conducting counselling sessions via Zoom for students who have been buffered by the restrictions that have upended their university experiences. “For a lot of students it’s been very difficult to carry on without their support structures. That feeling of being trapped [after moving back in with their families] has been very difficult for some young people to manage.
“Some people with social anxiety have felt less threatened, whereas people with health anxiety have had a heightened sense of anxiety.
“To some extent the whole nation has felt anxious. There’s a feeling of things not turning out as expected, and the lack of structure and boundaries in people’s lives have been a real challenge for all of us.”
Beaumont’s book was in the offing long before the pandemic hit, but she has always sensed that therapeutic practices can be just as important as therapy in challenging times. “I started making bread long before I worked as a therapist and then I suppose those things coalesced and I started to realise that a lot of the things that I was saying and listening to in the therapy room actually had echoes in my experience of bread making.
“Obviously I’m a strong advocate for therapy as an important route to recovery for many of us, but increasingly I think we’re all realising that there are many things that we can do to help ourselves that are highly therapeutic but are not therapy.
“For me, bread making has been that coming together of my professional experience of what helps us to be well, and my personal passion for bread making which has been there for quite a while.”
As we hurtle towards a winter of second lockdowns (as we speak, Beaumont’s part of the north east has just gone into lockdown), it could be more important than ever to actively do things to maintain our mental health.
“To some extent it’ll be our experience of the first lockdown that will create our attitude towards the second lockdown,” says Beaumont. “Because lockdown has been very difficult, we’re bound to approach the second with fear and trepidation. But at the same time there are things we can learn.”
Self care could be even more important this time round, she says. “Sometimes when people are struggling with their mental health their self care falls off a cliff. It’s that sense that you’re not worth looking after, your sleep goes all over the place, you’re not eating well, you’re not exercising, you’re not doing things that would help you to lift your mood or manage your anxiety levels.”
Breadmaking, of course, won’t be for everyone, but finding an equivalent activity can be so valuable, whether it’s swimming, knitting, walking, or something else entirely, says Beaumont. “If we’re feeling low then we don’t want to do things, but we can help ourselves by choosing to do activities.”
She advocates anything with “repetitive movements”, that doesn’t require you to look at your phone. It’s about “giving ourselves the message that we’re worth looking after.”
Soda bread (with variations)
By Pauline Beaumont
The only equipment you will need to make this bread is a mixing bowl, a spoon and a baking sheet (lined with baking parchment to stop the bread sticking). Soda bread relies on the chemical reaction of acid (from the buttermilk) with bicarbonate of soda to produce the gas that raises the bread. This happens quickly, hence there’s no need to knead or prove the dough. In fact it is best to avoid hanging around and get this loaf into the oven as soon as you have mixed it.
This recipe is for a wholemeal version but feel free to substitute plain or strong white flour for some or all of the brown if you prefer a lighter loaf. You could bake it in a loaf tin but the traditional (Irish) way is to form a round loaf and to make a deep, cross-shaped cut in the dough. Apart from any symbolic significance, this helps the bread bake through thoroughly.
MAKES
1 loaf
INGREDIENTS
450g wholemeal flour, plus extra for dusting (or this loaf works well with a mixture of half strong, white, bread flour and half wholemeal flour)
1 tsp fine salt (unrefined sea salt if possible)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
A handful of oats
450ml buttermilk (or you can use 450ml milk with 1 tbsp lemon juice added to it) splash of milk (optional – only if required)
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 200ºC/180ºC fan/Gas 6.
Put the flour, salt, bicarbonate of soda and oats into a mixing bowl and stir. Make a dip or well in the centre of the dry ingredients and stir in the buttermilk.
Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and use your hands to work it into a ball (it will be about 15cm in diameter). If it is too soft and sticky add some flour. If it is too dry and not all the flour has been incorporated, add a splash of milk.
Put the ball of dough on the baking parchment on the baking sheet and cut a cross into the top. Cut into the dough quite deeply, about half way down the depth of the loaf. It will immediately start to open up, this is fine and it is time to get it straight into the oven.
Bake for approximately 45 minutes or until the crust is browned and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped underneath.
Your soda bread can be cooled on a wire rack, but this is a bread that can also be eaten while it is still warm.
Reflect on how, in under an hour, you have produced a wholesome loaf of bread, an honest loaf, a rustic beauty, to share with people you care about.
There are hundreds of recipes for soda bread. Some recipes include a tablespoonful of treacle or honey, so try them out and see what you prefer. A lovely, savoury version results from the addition of 125g of grated, hard cheese. A teatime, sweeter variation is to add 1 teaspoon of mixed spice, 100g of demerara sugar and 150g of whatever dried fruit you have in the cupboard (you could use raisins, currants, sultanas, chopped dates, chopped dried apricots or mixed peel).
This is a bread to make on impulse or when unexpected visitors arrive; it provides almost instant gratification. Why not invite a friend to enjoy it with you? Soda bread is best eaten on the day it is baked so enjoy it while it is fresh. Soda bread goes wonderfully with butter and jam or marmalade but also with cheese or soups or stews (especially Irish stew).
Recipe taken from Bread Therapy by Pauline Beaumont (out now, Yellow Kite £12.99)
