This week I achieved a milestone I have been dreaming about for a long, long time. One full year, or 52 loaves of gifted bread. While 52 may seem like a humble number, it covers a lot of learning and life that I have chewed up this last year. Before I dive into that in a second reflection post I am planning later this week, I owe a little recap on loaves 50, 51, and 52.

Loaf 50 was actually a birthday cake gift to a dear, dear friend. I can get away with gifting a cake because it was a very humble, simple cake that could be eaten with a (mostly) straight face for breakfast like a quick bread. And also I can get away with it because, as I have to continually remind myself, I make the rules around here. How do I keep forgetting that? Anyway, it was a perfect little giveaway because it allowed me to steal over to her house one weeknight evening and have a quick chat and catch up. Just the sort of connection I was after when I started this project.

Loaf 51 was a lovely sourdough boule that was a bit of an experience to giveaway. It was actually the second boule I made that week. The first I tried to giveaway and was unsuccessful in finding someone to take it. I didn’t have a strong feeling for the who on the first loaf, but I took it when I dropped off my son at church for youth group one night. Our church happens to be near the local homeless shelter, so I was hoping I would find someone who could use the bread to eat. But as I sat in my car I will confess I was a bit conflicted. Would it feel exploitative to try to give the loaf to someone who was homeless? I didn’t want that at all. I also didn’t want to be presumptuous or rude in assuming someone needed food. I sat by the road praying. It definitely was outside my comfort zone. I waited. I finally saw a woman walking alone and talked to her and offered the bread. She said she wasn’t hungry, as she had just had dinner at the shelter, so I wished her well and went on my way. I thought about a few other people I could gift the bread to, but then I thought about the lesson I was learning. Sometimes what you have to offer is not needed at that time and that is perfectly okay. Some gifts’ time hasn’t come yet and you need to wait for what is right. That loaf is now in the freezer asleep and dreaming of what it will become in the future–bread pudding? Summer panzanella? Croutons? I would love to make it into something to gift to someone in the future, but that may be my love of a neat and tidy ending. Time will tell.

That still left me with a need to gift bread that week, so I made another loaf and gifted it to a parent from my daughter’s classroom. She was helping to coordinate donations and I had to drop things off at her house–I added the bread into the rest of the supplies and just told her thank you for donating her time to help the classroom. It was a simple giveaway, no fuss what so ever, but it didn’t feel forced.

Loaf 52 was a recipient I had sort of been saving for a long time. I knew she was on the list to receive, but I wanted to think through the right bread, and finally, when loaf 52 rolled around, I knew it was right. I got to deliver a new bread that I recently published on the site (please, please make it–you won’t be sorry), Chocolate Hazelnut Sourdough to her at church on Sunday and it felt like a wonderful cap to the year. I hope she enjoyed it. She is a giver at her very heart, and so getting to give her a gift made me feel like I was speaking a love language she would appreciate.