Avery's Bread
My sister in the Victorian baby carriage that Mom & Dad bought in New York. Explains a lot about our childhood!
Right after Mom and Dad got married, they moved to New York so that Dad could attend grad school at Columbia. Mom got a job teaching Junior High English in Port Chester and they rented an apartment in Rye. This was an exciting time in New York, Dad commuted daily to Columbia and was there for the upheaval of the 1968 protests. Mom would often go into the city by herself to see amazing music and ballet performances. Years later in North Carolina when my Uncle Frank announced that he was dating a former New York City Ballet dancer named Mimi Paul, Mom proclaimed, “I’ve seen her dance!”. It seems she had taken herself to a performance of “Afternoon of a Faun” and remembered the lead.
Mom and Dad had fun furnishing their first married apartment. They developed an eye for antiques focusing on the, then out of fashion, Empire style, and they fetched some amazing pieces for pennies on the dollar. (I have my eye on their intricate sideboard with knife boxes!) If I recall correctly, a lot of items were purchased at auction, including the ridiculous Victorian baby carriage featured in the photo above. Mom said that when she used to walk us around in it all of the neighborhood dogs would go berserk.
One New York adventure took Dad to Andy Warhol’s Factory. He ended up there because he had seen an ad for a small yellow motorbike in the Village Voice and was interested in buying it. Dad says that he showed up and knocked, and that Andy came to the door of the tinfoiled studio holding a can of spray paint. They negotiated and the bike was Dad’s! What makes this story even crazier is that this bike was the subject of one of Warhol’s tedious films. He panned around it for hours, documenting every detail. Somewhere I have a photo of Mom and Dad on this motorbike with Mom wearing some very jazzy boots. This bike was in our garage when I was growing up. Dad fired it up occasionally and I remember riding helmet-less on the back around the neighborhood a few times. (Hey, it was the 70s.) The story ends tragically. Well, not as tragic as someone dying which is probably what you expected, but tragic in a certain sense. We lived across the street from a group home for wayward teens (that’s a story for another day) and Dad was kind of mentoring one of them, letting him help fix up the bike. One day, we woke to find it stolen from the garage and the kid long gone. I don’t think we ever told him the Warhol connection or that he would necessarily understand it. I didn’t understand it particularly until I got a little older and artsy. But once I did, you can bet I’ve been kicking myself ever since for that loss!
I mentioned earlier that Mom taught Junior High English in New York. I think it was a particularly tough time for her. She was young and the kids were not nice. But, being Mom, she made the most of a less than perfect situation and decided to put on a school production of “Bye Bye Birdie”. She managed to convince a local juvenile delinquent that it would be cool to play Conrad Birdie, and then the rest of the production fell into place. Dad consulted on the musical portion and the show was a hit! This is yet another example of Mom unearthing potential in someone and making cool things happen.
While in New York, some of Mom and Dad’s closest friends were an older couple, Avery and Joel Brooke. Joel was a classmate of my father’s, having gone back to school in mid-life. Avery and Joel were cool, so cool that they were asked to be my sister’s Godparents. Their daughter, Lucy, is the artist who painted the fabulous portrait of my mom mentioned in the Porcupines post. Avery was a fascinating person: a spiritual author, a gourmet cook before everyone was, and, as we found out later, a Rockefeller heiress. She shared this bread recipe with us and I’ve always loved it. It makes for a good, heavy loaf with lots of texture. I know less about Joel, but I do remember going to his funeral in Connecticut. Their former housekeeper’s sons played “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desire” on steel drums. It showed me that funerals can be celebrations, and it remains one of the loveliest versions of the song that I’ve heard.
So, in celebration of the ones we’ve lost, Avery, Joel, and Mom, let’s bake some bread!
AVERY’S BREAD
3 packages yeast
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 cup lukewarm water
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3 cup lukewarm water
3 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp salt
1 cup powdered milk
½ cup vegetable oil
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3 cup whole wheat flour
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1 cup wheat germ
3 cup white flour
2 cup whole wheat flour
Combine first 3 ingredients in a small bowl, stir and set aside.
Combine next 5 ingredients in a large bowl and stir.
Add in yeast mixture and 3 cups whole wheat flour and beat until smooth. Add wheat germ and remaining 3 cups of whole wheat flour, a cup at a time, beating until smooth.
Cover bowl with a damp towel and set in a warm place (around 85 degrees) until doubled in size.
Spoon into 3 greased bread pans and smooth down a bit. (The dough will be sticky.)
Cover with damp towel and let rise until doubled in size. (The rising times each take about 1 hour but vary widely with the temperature. Never use a hot place, it kills the yeast; but very slow rising is fine.)
Bake in preheated 350 degree over for 40-50 minutes. Bread is done when it shrinks away from side of pan. Turn out on rack. Brush with melted butter. Cool before slicing.
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