Bird Bread

Once I lived by the ocean, north with a tragic black rock coast. There was a blueberry meadow behind the house and in the distance, apple trees snuggled among the maples and oaks. I mixed, kneaded, poked down and kneaded again, the dough for two loaves of bread twice a week. Oh, the flour mess! Gradually I moved on to other culinary attempts.

Time went by and the bread maker was invented. I poo-pooed it as a very costly product. Just how many loaves of bread would one have to bake to make up the cost of the machine? Several years later I reconsider when I realized that all the ingredients went into an enclosed container to be processed. NO flour mess! OK, now I'm ready, hang the cost. The first loaf was akin to an adobe brick. I have no idea what I did wrong. It was winter and I put the compressed offering out in the snow for the squirrels. They wouldn't touch it. It laid at the edge of the woods until after March. I think the snow and thaws eventually broke it down at some molecular level.

That was 15 years ago and all my attempts since have been quite edible and even wonderful...until I tried a whole wheat recipe that called for whole wheat flour only?? Usually some white flour is added. Shades of adobe! This dough had three opportunities to rise. Nada. I baked it anyway to see if it would grow even a little bit. Nada.

Next, I wired the breadbricks to a tree branch outside of my kitchen window. The Gila Woodpeckers have enjoyed it the most. Their heads bob up and down like jackhammers on concrete. They have carved channels that the smaller birds use to edge out crumbs. The feast lasted almost 5 days. I am thinking about doing another couple of loaves with a seed mixture in the center for my friends of the class Aves to enjoy over the holidays.