Just Passing It Along
April 23
It’s time to kick off the second week of the Dear Old Bakehouse blog! I truly can’t explain the blessing it has been to get back to work doing what I love, and sharing it with people that I truly care about. Thank you so much for being willing to invest your time in me and my work. My hope and goal is that it only gets better from here.
In my last post, I briefly mentioned that I got my start because of my momma. Today, I want to talk a bit more about her. Because she was willing to invest in sharing her knowledge with me, I am here to share my knowledge with you, and I want this page to honor the women who shaped me as much as I want it to bless you.
This woman right here is my mom. She is also my best friend (now that I am finally old enough for that to be the case). I’ve never met a woman more willing to love and try to understand others to the best of their ability like she does. Where I can tend to have walls up until I’m comfortable, she leads with love. Always reaching out, even when it’s hard. I remember watching her in the kitchen when I was just a little girl and being completely fascinated by the process of her making dinner. I remember her and my dad sometimes working together to make dinner happen, and then sitting around the table with my parents and sisters, giggling and talking in a way that almost feels healing to look back on. The memories I have of childhood all seem to have golden edges around them, and the biggest part of that was because I was graced with loving parents.
I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but at some point at a rather young age, I sat on the counter and watched my mom make a cherry pie. I can still see the way her hands looked while she mixed the water into the pie meal. She let me help measure the flour, always fluffing it up in the bag with a butter knife before spooning it into the measuring cup, and leveling it off perfectly. She let me mix the sugar and flour into the cherries, and watch as she rolled out the crust, rolling it up onto the rolling pin when it was ready to be transferred to the dish, and then gently unrolling it into the pie pan. Hoping it didn’t fall apart in the process. She let me help her scrape the filling from the bowl into the waiting crust, and would always take a second to eat a few of the leftover cherries in their sugary juice before washing the bowl (She wasn’t against taking a few bites of the raw pie dough either, but don’t tell her I told you that).
For a while, I just kept helping her when I could, until, at some point, I knew the process well enough and she turned me loose to make my very first cherry pie all by myself when I was about 8 years old. Honestly, I don’t remember if I called for help at any point or not, but I do remember cutting into the finished product and thinking “Oh my gosh, I did it!”. My dad, being the good and supportive dad that he is (he’s getting his own blog post down the line for the way he has helped and supported me in my business efforts), told me it was so good that I could enter it into the state fair. And I held onto that compliment more than he probably thought I would.
Since then, I’ve spent many a day in my mom’s kitchen, either watching her make the pie, or being the one to make the pie so she didn’t have to. Our techniques have evolved over the years, but the pies I make will always be rooted in the pies she made. I don’t know that she would credit herself with the passion for baking that grew in me as life went on, but I sure would.
What I truly want to say today is, if you have a skill of any kind, be it baking, or carpentry, or horseback riding, or rollerblading, let your child watch you be good at it. My mother never forced my hands into the dough and said “Bake!”. What she did do was allow me to sit on the kitchen counter when I was curious, and drew my heart into saying “Bake?” without even realizing she had done anything at all.
I love the thought of passing along skill and knowledge. It’s the whole reason I am so excited about this new endeavor. I hope, in watching me do something that I love, you are quietly inspired to try it for yourself, good outcome or not. I’ll be here to share my recipes, tools, and techniques along the way. You never know.. You may have the new family pie baker hiding out in your heart somewhere, just waiting to be unleashed on every Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas from now until the end of your days.
With love and sincerity,
Your Baker, Hannah
(I just need to world to know that the above picture was 100% candid and not staged, even in the slightest. I caught this woman standing in the dining room like this and it will always be my favorite.)