My history of bread making

BREADS - I have always loved making breads. It is a task that always brought serenity to my body and soul. Through the years I have managed to dissipate life's worries simply by putting my energy on kneading a loaf of bread! The dough in between my hands have the ability to calm me down and consequently, my energy changes. That is how problems get solved! 
In addition, bread making can connect us with humanity through time and space.  Bread has maintained life everywhere and therefore, it inhabits the deep recess of our unconscious.
Having traveled and lived in different parts of the world, I have eaten and learned to make breads from many places. Every time I bake a different loaf, I remember and see in front of me a face of a loved one or a stranger somewhere in the world serving me a slice of her/his own bread. I always ask for the recipe and no one ever denied giving to me. For that reason, to me personally bread making is a connecting symbol reminding me of the brotherhood and sisterhood of us all.
I started to make bread at the age of 10 in an adobe oven in my grandmother Gertrudes's backyard. She lived in a mill village and every time I came to visit, we made bread together. She used to buy a sac of fifty kilos of flour and we made enough bread to distribute to the whole neighborhood. I was the one who had to go from house to house giving the breads away.  
 In the winter in a house without insulation, it was hard to get the dough to rise but here was her solution: She placed the dough or the breads to rise on a wooden board covered with a dish towel and put them in bed under several blankets. It worked!
The baking process was this: The adobe oven was like a behive made of mud. After burning enough firewood in the oven to get it hot, grandma swept it to make it ready for the baking.  She taught me to know when the oven temperature was right for biscuits, then the breads, and last the cakes. "Stick your hand in and let me know if the temperature is right for the breads", she used to tell me.  Even now after I turn a modern oven on and wait to get warm, I stick my hand in to know if the temperature is right. Often it is not. I find that the electric or gas ovens are less reliable than my granny's adobe.