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My Mother’s CookbookAnna’s Potato Bread and Sour Cream Cookies
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The yeasty aroma of homemade
bread often wafted from my mother’s kitchen.
We didn’t have bread with every meal but, when bread or rolls were on the table, they were served as a complement to dishes that were light on starch. Mom considered nutritional balance and the compatibility of color, texture, and flavor of foods when planning her menus. Vegetable soup thick with tender beef and lentils, plump lima beans baked with onion and tomato, or chilled chicken salad with crunchy water chestnuts and slivered almonds were likely to be offered with bread or rolls. The recipe for bread that we liked best came from a German woman who helped our mother. Someone to assist with the housekeeping was necessary when my two brothers and I were young and our grandmother and her widowed sister lived with us in the rambling Victorian house my paternal grandfather bought in 1887. Anna Schmieding emigrated to join a colony of her countrymen who had come over to farm the rich Iowa soil that surrounded my hometown. Anna and Mom exchanged recipes as one good cook to another will do, and her sour cream cookies and potato bread were among our favorites. When my oldest brother went off to college, my mother started working a few hours a week at a flower shop that one of her friends had set up in the basement of her home. Mom liked the creativity of arranging flowers and, I’m sure, the chance to work away from home. The extra money she earned helped too, with one child in college and two more soon to follow. Her family came first though, and one Saturday she baked three loaves of Anna’s potato bread before leaving for the flower shop. It was senior prom night and more work than usual would be required of her that afternoon. Within an hour of her departure, my brother showed up unexpectedly with a friend from college in eastern Iowa. Ben had intended the visit to be a surprise and didn’t want to wait for the joyous welcome he’d anticipated when planning his trip home. He persuaded me to call our mother on the phone with a fabricated story that I wanted her to come home right away. I’ve never been good at lying and so my half-hearted attempts failed to alarm Mom sufficiently to bring her home. In the meantime, Ben had cut into a loaf of the warm bread, and he and his friend began devouring slice after slice, melted butter dripping between their fingers as they hovered over the kitchen table. This aroused panic in my mind for I imagined the catastrophe of Mother returning home to find no bread left for the evening meal. And none for me to eat, I might add. I made another phone call and yet another, but still she refused to come home, explaining that they had many orders left to fill. After Ben and his friend had finished the first loaf and eaten half the second, their appetites were sated enough to finally hear my plea of “please don’t eat all the bread cuz Mom will be really mad.” In a few more hours she did return and was properly surprised and pleased to see her adored oldest child. She accepted as normal that he and his friend had helped themselves to a healthy amount of her home baked bread. Anna’s Potato Bread 2 packages dry yeast 1 cup lukewarm potato water (100-115 degrees) 1 cup lukewarm water 1 teaspoon sugar 4 cups flour Let yeast stand in potato water and sugar for 5 minutes to proof. Add additional cup of water and gradually add flour, beating until smooth. Cover and put in warm place to rise until double in bulk. 2 cups milk, heated to scalding Mom’s cobalt blue Fiestaware cookie jar usually contained at least
a few Anna’s Sour Cream Cookies Cream lard or butter with sugar and beat in eggs. Add sour cream, then
add As it turned out, Mom needed that cookie jar after Dad died and was given
a
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