An Invasive Species

Tonight, at the end of this busy night during student orientation, I am thinking about a woman named Nanette who attended the church where I went in New York City. Nanette was one of those wizened women who told stories and imparted the wisdom of life, in an almost off-handed manner. I got to know Nanette at Advent Lutheran on the Upper West Side through a small group discussion. I remember vividly Nanette describing how she loved to bake bread. It was more of an obsession handed down from her father, as she relayed the story.

She spoke of growing up in New Hampshire, and delighted filling in the story with marvelous details about her World War II era neighborhood of saltbox cape cod houses with white clapboard siding. She spoke about the kitchen and that warm, ferment-y aroma emanating from the oven, that smell that makes your mouth water and your heart soften.

As is often the case with these older-women-in-a-church, she shared her story deliberately and at a leisurely pace. She explained that her dad was the chief bread-baker in their family, and he approached the task with scientific precision. Nanette said her father had a basic recipe that worked pretty well, but he was always experimenting, tweaking this and that to see how it would change. He carefully measured the flour and the yeast, the salt and the water and the honey, and he kept meticulous notes on what he had done. As the silver-tongued Nanette relayed, he loved the experimenting: one time, a half-cup more whole-wheat flour; next time, a half-teaspoon less yeast. Another time, two tablespoons of oil. Extra kneading. Let it rise in the oven. Let it rise by the wood stove. Bake it hotter and shorter. Bake it cooler and longer.


Nanette’s father kept track of what he put into the dough, and he kept track of how he handled it, and he kept track of how it turned out. This time, too dry. Next time, too sticky. Another time, it didn’t rise nearly enough, and it came out of the oven like a dense, solid brick. He kept track of all these things—he even kept track of the weather conditions, she said, the humidity and the temperature and the precipitation. And yet, no matter how meticulous his notes were, no matter how many factors he tried to track, the bread was never quite predictable. All those experiments let him come closer to the results he wanted, but he never pinned it down entirely. There always remained some element of wildness, of unpredictability.


Let’s think about the mystery and magic of yeast: just a couple of teaspoons is enough to leaven several cups of flour! There are things you can do to help it along—you can feed it and keep it warm and give it time to grow—but you can’t control it entirely. As Nanette told her story of her bread-baking father, she helped us understand the point she wanted to make. Again, there are things you can do to help the yeast along—you can feed it and keep it warm and give it time to grow—but you can’t control it entirely. Hmmmm…Nanette reminded us, you might set it to rise and go off to do an errand, thinking you have plenty of time, only to return and find your counter overrun by sticky dough. Or maybe you’ve scheduled a dinner party, and you have everything carefully planned. The bread will come out at 6:45; the guests will arrive at 7:00; you will sit down to piping hot bowls of soup and fresh, warm, crusty slices of bread ... And then you might find that the yeast is taking its sweet time and the bread won’t be ready for another hour, and you and your guests are just going to have to wait. The yeast does not grow on your time frame, her dad cautioned her. It is not concerned about being convenient. It has a pace of its own, as living things do, and although you can help it or hinder it, there always remains some element of mystery, of wildness, of unpredictability.

Just like my good friend Doris Jackson is able to do, and like my grandmothers, Nanette brought her story of daily life back to something relating to church interest. Nanette taught me something I did not know: in Bible times, good as it might smell in the baking of bread, yeast was a symbol of impurity, of uncleanness. At Passover, when they commemorated the Israelites’ hasty flight out of Egypt, all traces of leaven had to be removed from the house—the dishes scoured, the cupboards swept, and any leavened bread consumed or disposed of. Just the littlest bit of yeast was enough to contaminate a whole barrel of flour, because it was alive and unpredictable, and it might start growing and spreading like an invasive species. No matter how carefully you measure or how meticulously you experiment with the yeast, you can’t quite control it!

You may begin to see why Nanette and her wonderful story of yeast, of unpredictability come to mind tonight. Tomorrow we end student orientation and we begin teaching classes here at KA! Teaching adolescents is remarkably similar to baking bread. You can experiment, you can tweak, you can take meticulous notes, and yet these magnificent adolescents evolve at their own pace. There is certainly more than a bit of mystery and wildness and unpredictability to this very measured maturation. And like the baking of bread, teaching is a thrilling and nourishing way to spend a life.

Because the aisle full of Pepperidge Farm and Wonderbread makes it easy to forget the mysterious unpredictability of yeast, I don’t marvel enough at this process that requires patience, craft, skill, experience, and will. Tomorrow as I begin my 22nd year of teaching high school I am thrilled to see our own “invasive species” back on campus, the young historians I will encounter in Room 125 in the King Hussein Humanities Wing in the Academy Building at KA.

Who knows what this year will bring? I do know I am excited to begin year four with some of the most invigorating students I have ever taught. I have a feeling that Nanette’s story, and its promise of that the sweet and pungent aroma of the unpredictable, mysterious, alive and growing invasive species will thrill me yet again.

Can you smell it?