Today's Heartlift with Janell
Sometimes the story we tell ourselves is not really true. Sometimes the story others tell about us is not really true. On "Today's Heartlift with Janell," Author, Trauma-informed, board-certified marriage and family specialist, and Professional Heartlifter, Janell Rardon, opens conversations about how emotional health and mental fitness effects absolutely every area of our lives. When we possess and practice healthy, strong, resilient emotional health practices, life is so much better. Read Janell's newest book, "Stronger Every Day: 9 Tools for an Emotionally Healthy You."
Today's Heartlift with Janell
308. Baking Bread as a Spiritual Practice with Kendall Vanderslice
"Bakers can commit their entire lives to learning the craft of bread and still find new nuances of flavor and texture every time they bake. This simultaneous simplicity and complexity is, in many ways, much like the life of faith."
-Kendall Vanderslice
This episode delves into the powerful connections between mothering, baking, and spirituality, offering the invitation to explore how the kitchen can become a sacred space. Janell welcomes Kendall Vanderslice, author of Bake and Pray: Liturgies and Recipes for Baking Bread as a Spiritual Practice, to discuss the essential practices of nurturing ourselves and our relationships through baking and prayer. Vanderslice emphasizes the importance of taking time to slow down and engage with the process and urges the rediscovery of rest and community.
Order Kendall's new book, Bake and Pray
Join Kendall's Lenten Bake, Register Here. I am so ready to begin the sourdough journey.
Explore some of my favorite bakeries:
Resistance in Carrasco, Uruguay
Nives in Antwerp, Belgium
LaBrioche in Norfolk, Virginia
Begin Your Heartlifter's Journey:
- Visit and subscribe to Heartlift Central on Substack. This is our new online coaching center and meeting place for Heartlifters worldwide.
- Download the "Overcoming Hurtful Words" Study Guide PDF: BECOMING EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY
- Meet me on Instagram: @janellrardon
- Leave a review and rate the podcast: WRITE A REVIEW
- Learn more about my books and work: Janell Rardon
- Make a tax-deductible donation through Heartlift International
As I've listened to the stories of thousands of women of all ages in all kinds of stages through the years, I've kept their stories locked in the vault of my heart. I feel as if they've been walking around with me all through these years. They've bothered me, they've prodded me and sometimes kept me up at night. Ultimately, they've increased my passion to reframe and reimagine the powerful positions of mother and matriarch within the family system. Mother and matriarch within the family system. I'm a problem solver, so I set out to find a way to perhaps change the trajectory of this silent and sad scenario about a dynamic yet untapped source of potential and purpose sitting in our homes and churches. It is time to come to the table, heartlifters, and unleash the power of maternal presence into the world. Welcome to Mothering for the Ages, our 2025 theme. Here on today's Heartlift. I'm Janelle. I am your guide here on this heartlifting journey. I invite you to grab a pen, a journal and a cup of something really delicious. May today's conversation give you clarity, courage and a revived sense of camaraderie. You see, you're not on this journey alone. We are unified as heartlifters and committed to bringing change into the world, one heart at a time. Well, hello, it's Janelle, I'm so happy to be with you. What do you think of our new intro? Okay, heartlifters, I'm working really hard on this side to bring us into a new realm, a new season of the podcast. You know change is inevitable. I don't really like it, but we have to grow with the seasons in our lives and I am definitely in a new season as a grandmother of five. Yes, it has been quite the journey, and that newness in my life, that new position, as I've said, is it a position? Is it a calling? What is it Into this world of matriarchy, has made me revisit my years of mothering and I just want to give this whole entire year to mothering and I'm really excited about it. Let me know what you think. I'm trying lots of different things and I want to be applicable in your life. That's why I'm here. So let me know what you think and I'll just keep making little tweaks here and there until we find our new intros, our new way of doing things and connecting on a deep level level, because that's what I want in this new year. I have to tell you I have so many luminous conversations in the vault to bring to you this year, so many that I may have to make a new podcast or just put some of the bonus episodes over on Substack.
Speaker 1:By the way, be sure, be sure, right now. Stop and subscribe to Heart Lift Central on Substack. Just put in Heart Lift Central and you will find your way to Substack. If you have any problems becoming a free subscriber, and if you'd be so kind to be a paid subscriber, then we don't have to have commercials or I don't have to figure out ways to monetize this beautiful podcast. So make your way there, because I will be giving all of my time and energy and writing to Substack. I no longer have a newsletter through my typical newsletter format. It is all on Substack. So I don't want you to miss the additional resources and conversations and what they call vlogs. You know video, blogs, teachings that I have there for you. Yes, there are additional bonus materials for paid subscribers. So, please, it's really such a small contribution, but it will keep us from having commercials and, believe me, when I'm listening to a podcast, I just kind of zone out when the commercials come and I'm like get back to the real stuff here, and I so want to keep us in real conversation without those pauses.
Speaker 1:We have three heartbeats here in this community. Here's a new transition as well you can lean in. I used to call this the threefold cord, but I have come to realize that they really are heartbeats, because they are what we're all about here and these three heartbeats say them with me. A healthy sense of self that's our identity, our God-breathed identity. Healthy behavior patterns that's how we move through the world. And then our healthy, strong, dynamic communication skills that's how we, non-verbally and verbally, make our presence known to everybody in our life. These three heartbeats are going to be at the core of every conversation we ever have here. They're just so, so important and I believe and I know you do too that when we move through the world, our worlds and the world in general, all of our spheres of influence, practicing, practicing these three heartbeats, everything is different.
Speaker 1:And I specifically and strategically believe that when a mother possesses and practices these three heartbeats in her work of mothering, that the people in her sphere will become healthy, emotionally and mentally, relationally and, ultimately, spiritually. I believe this to my core. I'm watching it in the lives of my grandchildren. They are a living experiment to me of seeing secure attachment happen and it is making me even more passionate. I know it's hard to believe, but it is, because when we mother ourselves we don't see it. But now I'm observing it as grandmother and watching my two daughters, my son-in-laws, my two daughters, my son-in-laws, my daughter-in-law, all giving to these children imperfectly. Remember, we're not called to perfection, although biblically it's maturity. So we are called to maturity, but we will be imperfectly perfect and I have humbly told you all the mistakes I have made in mothering. But I'm hoping to bring to the matriarchal season of my life more maturity than ever and a heart that's willing to always be learning and listening.
Speaker 1:So one of these heartbeats, the healthy sense of self, is demonstrated through the beautiful life of today's guest, kendall Vanderslice. Oh, I initially brought Kendall on because I have a really dear friend, hello Gail, one of our HeartLift sponsors, because she just is a master sourdough bread maker, and I wanted to gift her with this conversation because Kendall Vanderslice has a new book out called Bake and Pray, I know, and she is the head of a beautiful ministry called Edible Theology, and I said I just want to give this as a gift to Gail. But then when I had this conversation with Kendall, oh my gosh, I just couldn't keep it to myself. As you will hear, kendall knew in her knower you know we call that deep, intuitive gut that we as women tend to have. She's known in her knower, her life calling. She felt what she was called to do at an early age. Yet her journey is really organic and fascinating and I love how God has led her, even when she wasn't aware of it, to the college she was to go to and how that college then invited these professors who were teaching these courses that were strategically inviting her into the life work that she would be doing.
Speaker 1:Kendall is a baker, a writer, a speaker and, as I just said, the founder of Edible Theology Project, a ministry that connects the communion table to the kitchen table. She's a graduate of Wheaton College and Boston University and Duke Divinity School. She is the author of by Bread Alone and we Will Feast, and now she is the author of, as I said, bake and Pray Liturgies and Recipes for Baking Bread as a Spiritual Practice. She has a big-eared beagle named Strudel and she lives in Durham, north Carolina, where my brother and my nephew live, and his family, and she teaches workshops on bread baking as a spiritual practice practice and she has a beautiful Lenten program that she is going to be offering. That I will tell you all about at the end of the show and in the show notes.
Speaker 1:Okay, heartlifters, are you ready to bake and pray? Very important part of all of our lives as women, because we do do a lot of cooking and baking and I love how she has transformed that into a beautiful liturgical practice. Welcome Kendall to the show. Welcome, kendall. Tell us all about this. This is so fun.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. It is so good to be here with you today.
Speaker 1:I mean, where were you? I always love to ask this question when were you when you came up with that connection connecting the communion table to the kitchen table? I have never heard that said. Maybe it has been, but I just think brilliance. Well thank you.
Speaker 2:I think the first time that I really made that particular connection was when I was a senior in college and I was trying to figure out. You know, I knew that I wanted to work in food in some capacity.
Speaker 2:I had known really since I graduated high school that I wanted to be a baker and it is a long sort of circuitous journey, but the short of it is that God made it very clear that I was supposed to go to Wheaton College to go to undergrad, and I really went kicking and screaming. I was like I want to be a baker, I just want to go to culinary school and start working in kitchens. I want to be a baker, I just want to go to culinary school and, you know, start working in kitchens. And, um, I felt so strongly that God was telling me no, you need to go. You know, you need to go to this particular school. Um, and so I went and, you know, going after a very practical degree, decided to study anthropology, which is the most logical thing to study if you want to become a baker.
Speaker 1:Well, Kendall you do write about bread baking all over the world.
Speaker 2:It's true, it's true God knew early on, very fascinating. But so my last year at Wheaton, we got two new faculty who did one who worked on anthropology of food and one who worked on anthropology of consumption and they just opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking about food and realizing that, you know, my work with food didn't just have to take place in the kitchen, that I could understand food from the perspective of history, from culture and from theology as well, and so I was working on a final paper, trying to pull together these pieces and looking at you know, how do I see food at play in the narrative of scripture? And so I was looking at, you know, the creation accounts in Genesis, and then I realized this is a story of a meal, this is a story of a meal that's gone awry, but then, when we look at the story of Jesus's last supper, this is also a story of a meal, and of a meal that puts everything right again. And that was just a mind blowing connection.
Speaker 2:Like this, is this like tale of two meals where God is telling us what God does at the table, and then, when we look ahead to the account in Revelation, we have this image of a marriage supper of the lamb. We have this image of the tree of life returning that. It's just these stories of meals, all throughout scripture Banqueting table, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:And so that just blew up my whole paradigm and I was like I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know how you make a job out of this, but it's more than just baking, and so that was really kind of the genesis for me.
Speaker 1:I love those stories. My daughter Brooke and I, when I was in St Louis helping with baby June, my fifth little grandbird, we watched the Martha Stewart Netflix documentary. Have you watched it?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, I have. I found it fascinating.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, it fascinating, right yeah, I want to know what you found fascinating and see if we're on the same track, because your story reminds me of that documentary in many positive ways.
Speaker 2:Well, I just found it fascinating the way that she, I just think that she's a fascinating human being, both in positive and negative ways, and so it was interesting to. It's interesting for me, I think, being someone you know, I am a food scholar, so I have done a degree in food studies, and so you know we are studying how food culture is created, and so I've been, for the last couple of years, really focused on understanding the development of 20th century food culture and how media plays into that, and so it's interesting to have these figures who we just kind of take for granted as, like Martha Stewart yes, this was, you know, she, obviously she was just a presence for in many of our homes.
Speaker 1:Oh, for sure, you know I'm a lot older than you, but yes, for sure.
Speaker 2:But then to see, like to be reminded. Oh yes, she has this origin story, she has this you know way in which she built things that, like it didn't just kind of happen. She didn't just appear, and so I found seeing the unfolding of her journey to be really fascinating.
Speaker 1:That's it. That's exactly what I was going to say. It was so organic. I felt it was just such an incredible unfolding, especially the finance part of her life. I didn't really understand that she actually was a floor trader, like she was involved in that. Then it made more sense. As to the later debacle, or whatever you want to call, it.
Speaker 1:And so I just thought it was. It spoke to my heart, in the same way as your story just spoke to mine, that you just had a passion that's safe to say. Yes, oh yeah. Was that passion present from childhood? Like we're baking breadcrumbs, it was Like was that in your yes?
Speaker 2:It really was. I, you know, I went on a field trip in, I think probably first or second grade, went on a field trip to a great harvest bread company and I remember it so vividly, being in, you know, with my whole gaggle of classmates all in our uniforms, and I just remember being enamored by the process, these like massive bags of flour and these massive mixers and sort of the dance of shaping dough, and so I think I was mesmerized by it from a young age but I didn't really realize, you know, that that was what I was constantly being pulled towards. But in high school the kitchen was kind of my place of solace. That, you know, I was a very anxious teenager and and so it was where I went to process kind of thoughts and emotions, and I was one of five children, so our house was never quiet.
Speaker 1:No, no, where are you?
Speaker 2:I'm number two and we have a 16 year age span from oldest to youngest. So there were, you know, toddlers going crazy in the house while I was, you know, studying for final exams in high school, and so after everyone went to bed, it was like the kitchen, the silence of the kitchen. That was the only time to really get quiet in the house, and so I did a lot of late night baking and praying and processing, you know what am I doing with? My life.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, kendall, you just said something that blew my mind. And, hartlip, did you know how excited I got? And I'm really trying to harness that energy. So I don't blast your ears, but when you talked about the dance of making Joe, yeah, yeah, kendall. I have been a dancer since day one, so my passion, my quiet place, my solace was on a stage.
Speaker 1:believe it or not, or in a dance studio from gosh age four, and so I I love that you just combined our passions, not even knowing you were doing that. But what does that mean? What the dance of making.
Speaker 2:I am a dancer as well, and that plays significantly into my own story, and so I was a dancer, and all through this time in high school, I had a very fraught relationship to my body.
Speaker 2:Because of it, I am not built like a ballerina, but I was trained in classical ballet and so so much of my processing in these years was, you know, I have spent all of my life up till this point training for a professional classical ballet career and I am, you know, now being told like there's no way your body will be capable of doing that and so that was such a part of my processing. But then when I went to Wheaton, they were when I my first year.
Speaker 2:There was a year that they were attempting to rebuild this dance company on campus that was specifically focused on helping women who had grown up in the dance world in a really painful way to heal their relationship to their bodies and heal their relationship to dancing, and that's where I was introduced to the concept of embodied prayer, this idea that we can pray with our entire bodies, and so that, for me, was a just incredibly healing thing, but also opened my eyes to this whole new way of thinking about my body and how I connect with God. And so it really was that, that dance that then helped me see how baking itself, and baking too, can be a form of embodied prayer, and so, for me, that dance and that baking are always so deeply intertwined.
Speaker 1:It's just so beautiful and it flowed out of you exactly like a beautiful choreography would. So it's like you know the dance I can just see it in my brain I just love this so much.
Speaker 1:So when, then, you take us from I love your story so so much because of its organic, beautiful unfolding and I think that will speak to so many of us here in the first of the year, a brand new year and how I am so committed right now in my own life to once again in this third final act, third act of my life, to to have that organic unfolding again, does that make sense? Not something I'm pushing or I'm striving, or it just opens, yeah. And so I wonder, after college then I we all know that you went to Boston university for your MLA in gastronomy. How many was that immediate or was that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had one year off before I started the food studies program, but both throughout in my that sort of gap year before and then throughout the program. I was working in the restaurant industry during that time as well, oh, beautiful.
Speaker 1:So I'm sure you had many, many revelations. Do you write about that in the book, just to let our heart look? Just know I do. I write about it a little bit in Bake and Pray but a lot of this story is actually in my book by Bread Alone.
Speaker 2:So if you really want to dig into the dance piece and more of my personal background, that is, the two go beautifully together. I mean that design wise. We designed them to look beautiful together.
Speaker 1:And they do, but the stories intertwine as well. They very much do, so I want to focus today so much on your direction. Then, after your Boston University experience, and then you went to Duke, Divinity School. Okay, so we see these three beautiful flowing brooks into this river right and then into this ocean of the ministry that you now have today. But what led you to Duke?
Speaker 2:Well. So I had been curious about sort of the theological piece of what I was doing, really from the time that I was at Wheaton, I think the way that education is approached there is thinking about how our faith is informed by our academic work, and so I brought that into my work at Boston University, where I knew I was interested in the faith angle in some capacity. But I didn't really know how to get in. I was not trained in theology and so I wrote my thesis studying a church in the suburbs of Boston, and so that was what I focused on research-wise while at Boston University and I worked with faculty at the School of Theology there to help sort of design that project.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And so from there, I ended up kind of expanding my research, studying a handful of other churches, and as I was working with pastors from a wide range of theological backgrounds, I realized, you know, I don't, actually I don't know how to even process the range of beliefs and the range of experiences that I'm encountering. And so I went to do kind of half with personal theological questions.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to help understand like why do I believe, why am I convicted in the ways that I personally am convicted, and also what is the history of the tradition I grew up in the tradition of these other pastors that I have worked with, so part of it was just that personal theological wrestling, and then part of it was really wanting to dig deeper into this theology of food and because I felt like, you know, there is not that much written on it, but it is so, so rich, there is so much there. And so it was kind of that dual, both academic and also personal desire.
Speaker 1:I mean until I met you through this book and through Tental Momentum. Thank you. I can't say that I even realized there was a theology of food, but of course there is, and, like you said to us in the beginning, the correlation and the relevance that God, the Father, christ, the Son and the Holy Spirit place on the table, coming to the table. Now, we hear a lot of that, but I was just so curious to find out. Can I ask you, what were you studying in all of these different, what led you to these different churches Like? What was your purpose?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I wrote my thesis while I was at Boston University on a church that called itself a dinner church, so they held their service around the table. So my interest at that point was on what happens when we eat together. That changes the way we interact with one another. You know why is the table a place where community is built? And then I was wondering what does that have to do with communion? How does that shape our understanding of why Christ would give us a table at the center of Christian worship?
Speaker 2:And so I studied that one church and then started learning about several others that were worshiping in a similar way, and so I went and studied all of those churches as well, and really part of it was that I just couldn't even pinpoint my theological questions at that time and my background was in anthropology. The sort of research methods I was trained in was ethnography, and so this was kind of the way that I could start thinking about these questions I had about the connection between the communion table and food in general.
Speaker 1:I am just speechless, Like so many questions that I have. I'm so curious. It's so cool and just so very powerful. So then, okay, how then did the Edible Project come into being? So this is a very short synopsis. This is not a Netflix documentary yet of how God has unfolded His purpose in your life, but I find it fascinating. So where?
Speaker 2:did the edible project come from, so the name edible theology started right before I went to Duke. I was trying to figure out how to encapsulate what it was that I was doing, because I didn't just want to study kind of a theology of food. I was interested in how food, culture and theology were intertwined. And so there had been some books written on food and faith or on a theology of food, and they tended to be from sort of an agrarian perspective, really digging into the Genesis account, this question of how should we grow food today, and that was just not quite what I was curious about. And so I wanted a way to sort of encapsulate what I was doing and a lot of my food studies. Colleagues were using edible kind of something as a way of encapsulating what they were doing in food studies. So you know edible history or edible. You know edible, there's the edible sort of state magazine.
Speaker 2:So edibleible North Carolina, Edible, you know Massachusetts, or those are that's kind of a way of thinking about how food and culture intertwine. And so I thought, well, edible theology sort of encompasses what I'm wanting to do. That it's about both how we learn about who God is through the process of eating and also how our relationship to food is shaped by our relationship to God. And so that was kind of the name, was just what I like put on my blog to describe what I was trying to do at Duke. And then about a year later, I started an email newsletter and so I titled it Edible Theology, because that seemed like it encompassed what I was doing. And then, you know, over the next few years I started developing various other resources and realized edible theology has kind of become a thing outside of me, that this is kind of the organization under which all of my work is taking place, and so it has in some ways been a very organic unfolding.
Speaker 2:In some ways it's been a very anxiety-ridden questioning where exactly are you leading me next, god?
Speaker 1:Good to know, really, really good to know. It's very comforting.
Speaker 2:Straightforward by any means. From internally it has felt very fraught and very confusing and like I tried a million things. Okay, People who have observed from the outside said that they do not. They did not that they did not capture that, you know, they did not experience that anxiety, but to me it felt like I am just throwing everything out there and seeing what sticks and it has been just really beautiful to see God sort of shape my thoughts and shape my work and connections and community in the process.
Speaker 1:Just want to get back. I can't get away from the dance of the dough, the dance of creating dough or making dough. What is it? What is it about? Baking a few allergies, not to the point of an EpiPen because I found help and holistic doctors to help them, but I was forced to make my own bread.
Speaker 1:A friend of mine who has beautiful Mennonite matriarchs in her area attuned me to this wheat they make in Montana. Now it's readily available. You can buy it already milled. But at that point you had to actually get the berries from Montana. It's called Montana wheat and I had to get a mill and if anyone knows me, I'm Not really Betty Crocker. At that point I ran a dance studio. I'd been a dancer, shine and gleam and sparkle and all that. Well, I was forced to mill the wheat, make six loaves a week because they could actually tolerate this red berry Montana wheat and it was a miraculous time for us. They started being able to have like a grilled cheese with goat's cheese and I could make a pizza crust and I made muffins and anything and everything, cookies from that wheat. And I know for me that time of the week where I needed the dough maybe it was the dancer in me, I don't know Was holy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it began like you're saying this word embodied. We talk about that a lot here in the community. It was an embodying time where I felt connected to a deeper place in myself. Is that what you're saying? Am I on the right track?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely Part of it is that I think it's hard to even describe, it's something that you have to experience, but I think part of what makes it so significant is that there is this kind of miraculous transformation that takes place over the course of making bread, that there's nothing quite like it. Um, that this, this wheat, is fundamentally transformed. You know that, um, when, when wheat is ground into flour and then that flour is mixed together with water, the water fundamentally transforms that wheat in a way that it can, never, cannot, be reversed. Uh, which I think, is this just beautiful parallel to our baptism that the amino acids and enzymes are activated that unravel these protein strands that fundamentally transform the structure of this wheat. And it goes from, you know, a million disparate particles to this deeply intertwined and interlocked network of proteins. And you feel that transformation in your hands as you mix and then knead dough. But then there's also this inherent slowing down, that baking bread is a slow process, that it requires slow work, and then it requires rest, and you get to see the transformation that takes place while this dough is at rest and while you, as the baker, are at rest.
Speaker 2:And so I think that God is communicating to us fundamental truths about what it means to be human in the process of baking bread. But it's also bread has been the fundamental, it's been the kind of the core of the human diet for most humans throughout most of human history, and so I think there is some kind of just visceral understanding of our connectivity that we experience in baking bread. For me, I was not at all surprised in 2020 when everyone just sort of collectively turned to sourdough bread baking because we had this loss of community, we had this loss of control and suddenly bread became this thing that connected us. That, I think, was kind of at a fun, maybe digital level we all sort of knew everyone else was doing it, but I think at a much deeper, spiritual level as well, it was connecting us in the way that bread has always been meant to do.
Speaker 1:It brought everyone to a digital table, didn't it?
Speaker 2:It did, it did.
Speaker 1:It really did and I think it your analogy, or your visual of water being poured on the flour and that miracle.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When all of the things and you know the gastronomy behind that, you know you said that so beautifully. I didn't know that Like amino acids and proteins and all of that, and you can't reverse it, you can't.
Speaker 2:Nope, nope, wow.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, so you are calling me back. I have been thinking about it since my friend started making her sourdough and she's just got me so excited to getting my hands back in some dough. Yeah, and it was a healing time. It was a very anxious time in my life, like you were saying about your time in high school, and you know, life is anxious, I think, today. And so putting your hands back in some dough might be the antidote that we're all looking for, and I'm so curious, kendall, if you would share with my heartlifters about I'm not going to say this right, this mise en place. Is that how I say that? Mise en place, mise en place, mise en place. Okay, yes, I only know what it is from reading your work, but I know maybe some of my heartlifters know, but I would love for you to tell us what that is and why you put that first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so mise en place is the process of preparing for the dish that you're about to make. So in the professional kitchen, it means weighing out your ingredients, reading your recipe all the way through, from beginning to end, so that you know where you're going to end up before you begin. And so you know. Oftentimes we think of the beginning of baking being the actual mixing of ingredients, but in a professional kitchen, you can't afford to make a mistake. You can't afford to start baking and then realize that you were missing an ingredient, or start baking and then realize that your timing isn't right. And so this mise en place is this time of preparation, and that time of preparation is what makes it possible to go into the rest of your day, you know, knowing that you're going to be successful. And so I like to think of it as a spiritual practice as well, our spiritual mise en place, this time of preparing our own hearts and minds for the ways that God might meet us in the kitchen and the process of preparing our food.
Speaker 1:What might that look like? Like you're really calling me. You're calling me home. I just got a brand new kitchen. My husband is a kitchen designer and before we've had a kitchen and design business for 36 plus three in the garage of our baby house. We called it, I started in the garage and he just retired. We just retired from that family business and I said, before you retire, you have got to give me one of your kitchens, because I did not have one. I. I'm like that would just be embarrassing, it's just a must. It is very practical and beautiful. I didn't get a second oven that I wanted, but I wanted to have a double oven. I always have, but I just didn't have the space.
Speaker 1:And so I have a brand new beautiful kitchen that I actually love being in and I think you're just calling me back and I think that you are calling back to many of us to a simpler way of life. Is that part of your edible theology?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. I think so often our relationship to work, our relationship to food, our relationship to the kitchen can be very fraught and very anxiety ridden, that we're constantly sort of searching for the right way to do things, the best way to do things, and I think in that sort of anxious quest for how to do things well, we fail to actually just slow down and see the ways that God is present with us in these incredibly simple rhythms. And so my goal with this book is to provide a blueprint of how to do that with the process of making bread. But I think these tools and these practices can reverberate out into our cooking, but also our work outside of the kitchen as well, and so the way that I provide that structurally is through a series of liturgies.
Speaker 1:Good, tell us, I know, yeah.
Speaker 2:So a liturgy is kind of the words and the rhythms of our worship, and so every church has a liturgy of some form. For some churches it's a very formalized liturgy of the words that you repeat each week, the movements that you repeat each week. For some churches it's very informal, but it's still a liturgy. This practice of you go in and you sing four or five songs, you have this sort of inherent sense of when do I raise my hands and when do I close my eyes, and then you hear a sermon and you have the altar call.
Speaker 2:That that rhythm that you repeat as a community, week after week after week, actually shapes your understanding of who God is, of how God is working in your community and how God is speaking to you. And so that liturgy, that rhythm is how God speaks to us and how God forms us and shapes us. And so I teach these bread recipes in terms of a liturgy, and so these prayers and these rhythms to repeat every single time that you bake, because I don't think that I can fully help you understand just in your brain how this works. Instead, you have to practice it. And it's through that practice, again and again and again, that I encourage you to invite God into this process and invite God to shape you through the process of baking bread, and so the first half of the book is these six different lessons.
Speaker 1:Yes, walk us through it, just give us that. Yeah, I have them right here.
Speaker 2:Yes, walk us through it. Just give us that. Yeah, I have them right here. Perfect. So those first six lessons are all a way to teach you just the very basics of bread. It is the same recipe again and again, and again and again, and encouraging you to pay attention to just a slightly different aspect of the bread each time. And so, through this repetition of baking again and again and again and of following these liturgies that are very similar but slightly different, they encourage you to see different things in the bread and see different ways that God is teaching you through bread, all while you yourself are learning to become comfortable with this particular bread baking recipe. And so then from there, once you have become comfortable with this basic bread recipe, I provide recipes for breads from Christian traditions all around the world throughout history.
Speaker 1:See, there you are, you anthropologist, you, yes, yes yes, I love it.
Speaker 2:So I've got recipes for Advent recipes for. Christmas recipes for Epiphany, for Lent, for Easter and for all saints, and so it is a really fun food history and anthropology, but also church history, a way of learning kind of how the church has known God through bread for generations and generations, and the illustrations are just so beautiful and simple and inviting.
Speaker 1:I mean, the whole book is. It's just a breath. It's a breath prayer. That's what the book is, do you? Well, you nailed it, you did, it's just simply Tyndall nailed it. I love Tyndall Momentum. Anyway, their books are incredible, and do you have a liturgy you could share with us right now?
Speaker 2:That you could pull up, or? Yes, sure, one of my favorite prayers. So the liturgy is, you know, it walks you through all of the different steps of the bread baking process and there are different prayers for different parts of the process, but my favorite prayer let's see if I can find it here it is. It is from the Liturgy for Breadbaking, with Attention to Transformation, and so this prayer is to be repeated while you are shaping the dough, but it says God of transformation. I want to put my trust in you, I want to rest and believe that you are at work along the way. Let this bread in my hands serve as a constant reminder that you renew me day by day. Though doubts may come and hopes may crumble, your faithfulness remains the same, amen.
Speaker 1:Amen. Why do you think or do you have a theological say in why Jesus said I'm the bread of life?
Speaker 2:I've been trying to probe that statement for years, and I'm constantly seeing more and new ways that God reveals God's self to us through bread itself, and so I think, in part, it is this very basic statement of those who heard Jesus say that knew that bread was fundamental to life, that it was most of what they ate they ate. As we learn about the science of bread and as we actually practice baking bread, we learn even more about how God is revealing God's self to us through bread, and so there is just so much that I just want to say you have to actually bake bread. It's something that you understand more through the actual practice of baking it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's hard. God is actually present with us through bread itself, in this very beautiful, delicious, tangible way, and then you're trying to make it tangible how God reveals himself through a practice that involves our hands and our being, and I just think the idea of a dinner church is radically amazing. I'm taking that away with me today. Did you write about that in your first book?
Speaker 2:So my first book is called we Will Feast Rethinking. Dinner Worship of the Community of God and that book is a study of dinner churches.
Speaker 1:Okay, perfect, I don't think I knew that, didn't do my homework on that one. So I will definitely find that. So I will definitely find that. When you talk about the science of baking, I am just really curious Outside of the flour and the water meeting, what would be the next step in the science of bread making? So I am so curious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so once the water starts to unravel the proteins in the dough, it unlocks the starches in the dough as well, and so the yeast begins to eat the starches that are present in the dough. And as the yeast eats the starches, it releases carbon dioxide that gets trapped in this protein network, and so that protein network called gluten is what is able to hold on to this carbon dioxide and that's what allows our dough to grow while also holding its structure and its shape. And so this process of baking bread is about building tension between these protein strands and their opposing qualities and their opposing needs, and building strength and building structure and building shape and flavor in our dough as the yeast works its way through.
Speaker 1:So the yeast has to work its way through.
Speaker 2:It does yeah.
Speaker 1:That's that beautiful story in the scripture. Yes, yes, yes, yes. There's just so many many stories about bread and yeast and all of these things. I had a reflection and I wanted to see if I'm way off base, because sometimes I can just get a little cray, cray, woo, woo. But I know my own journey with my children's gluten intolerance and food sensitivities and then finding that wheat that actually someone with celiac could eat, that Montana wheat.
Speaker 1:I remember the first time I made the bread it only had six ingredients and I gave it to my children and I was so nervous because I thought they're all going to just break out in hives. I'm going to have to call, you know, the ambulance. But they tolerated it so well and I actually believe in my heart of hearts. I mean the twins are now 34 and my oldest is 38 and they can eat anything Like they. I believe it was a part of healing their DNA, their structure, their you know all the amino acids, all those things that they were deficient in.
Speaker 1:Perhaps maybe because I had been anorexic, I don't know, and my being was not as healthy, because, you know, bread's a taboo when you're a dancer, you don't eat bread, you don't eat carbs, even today. You know God forbid, but I feel very strongly that it has everything to do with slowing down and when we have a healthy sense of self, like I say here, and healthy behaviors and healthy communication, when we're healthy inside, I think it increases our tolerance and increases our capacity to be able to eat like God designed for us to eat. Am I off track?
Speaker 2:No, I don't think you are at all. I think you know. The history of bread in the United States over the last century is a really fascinating one.
Speaker 1:Talk to us. I love this.
Speaker 2:This turn to industrialized bread was a very sort of distinct turn that happened just over a century ago with the advent of commercial yeast and just post-Louis Pasteur, this understanding of bacteria and yeast. Prior to this time, we didn't know what bacteria were, we didn't know exactly what yeast were, we could witness the repercussions of them, but we couldn't isolate that it was these microbes who were making this transformation.
Speaker 2:And so you know, late late 19th, early 20th century scientists are able to identify that it is this yeast and bacteria and so that sparks this movement called the sanitation movement, and there was this great anxiety around bacteria and yeast because we knew that it could cause disease. And so there was this hyper focus on sanitation and control and eliminating bacteria and yeast. And bread was seen as a very dangerous kind of thing because bread was involved in this very physical process. Your hands had to get in the dough.
Speaker 2:It was reliant on this long transformation of bacteria and yeast. But there were also fears of social change that were mapped onto that it was largely immigrants who were the professional bakers and there were these sort of fears of immigrants that were that these fears of sort of bacteria and yeast were mapped onto, these fears of these immigrant communities.
Speaker 2:Wow and so bread was seen as dangerous and as something harmful to our bodies, and so this new method of making bread was developed, this industrialized method that these machines that can make bread from start to finish in a really short amount of time. And the marketing sort of boy behind it was that these are loaves of bread that were made, that were never touched by a pair of human hands, but from beginning to end the human body didn't have to be involved in the process. We could eliminate the sort of fear of bacteria and yeast that these loaves were replicable. Every single loaf looked the same it was soft, it was white, it was fluffy and it was sliced, and so this was seen as like the safest, purest kind of bread.
Speaker 2:And what we've learned over the last hundred years is that that kind of bread is completely devoid of nutrition.
Speaker 2:And what we've learned over the last 100 years is that that kind of bread is completely devoid of nutrition. Our bodies are not able to digest it. It's devoid of flavor, of texture, that this bread is actually destroying us, that yeast and that bacteria, that long, slow transformation is necessary for this grain to become something that not only are we able to digest but actually that has the nutrients that we need to survive. And so in this attempt to both control and also speed up the process of bread baking you know, from the growing of the wheat, trying to speed up the growing and harvesting process, to the actual making of bread, we have turned bread into something that our bodies cannot handle. If you slow down either the way that that grain is grown and you have a higher quality, slower grown grain, that makes bread that is completely different, as you witness with your children.
Speaker 2:I did with that Montana wheat man, Even if you can't afford the nice flour, that Montana wheat man, Even if you can't afford the nice flour, if you slow down the bread baking and you give it this really long fermentation for most people that transforms it enough into a way that they can eat.
Speaker 2:And there is research on the slowness of our actual eating, that when we slow down and eat in community, it impacts our ability to digest.
Speaker 2:And so you know, god, god get both invites us and also commands us to rest, that this, that that God rested on the seventh day of creation, and both invites and commands us to do the same. And so often I think it's easy for us to really have in mind, like what does not get done when I don't, when I take the time to rest, if I slow down, if I take a break, what is not happening in this time? And I think we need to flip. If I slow down, if I take a break, what is not happening in this time? And I think we need to flip that paradigm and let the bread teach us to ask instead, what does not get done if I don't take the time to rest, if I don't slow down, what is failing to happen in me and the world around me? And so that is. There is so much that I think we have just misunderstood about both the beauty and the freedom that God offers us in bread.
Speaker 1:I am at the front of the line, front of the line of having to learn that again, why that lesson just continues. You know, I think maybe all of us are there always just misunderstanding rest, and here you have brought it all home to that one word. And when our bodies and our hearts are at rest, we are at our best. And so I thank you from the deepest part of me, because you're really chastise is the wrong word, you are, discipline is harsh. You're just calling me back to a slower pace of life that I have been trying to find for probably, maybe even from the utero of my mother being born into an alcoholic home.
Speaker 1:You know, my daughter lives in Belgium. She also lived in Uruguay, and both of those cultures they don't sell sliced bread. It's crazy, like Uruguay particularly, and it's all from a bakery. Like you know Europe and you have a Dutch history. Like, yeah, you know Europe and you have a Dutch history.
Speaker 1:It it's all like I just love going to Belgium, to Neve's cafe and watching them just make loaf after loaf, after loaf and they make enough for the day and they sell it and they're and it's gone. So it's very manna-like, yeah, and I just I think of this bakery in Uruguay and I just the walking there, resistance, walking there, buying my loaf of bread and my muffins and my croissants, and I mean, look, it just brings joy. And it's just, it's the French baguette in your arm, right it's. You're calling me back and I have a feeling you're calling many of us back. To slow the heck down. Get your book Bake and Pray, first and foremost, so that we can get liturgies and recipes to bake bread and enter into this new year with a bake and pray mindset Mise en place. Say it again, I love the way you say it Mise en place Mise en place.
Speaker 1:And even if you're empty nesters and there's just two of you, like me and my husband, light the candles, set the plates, mise en place. Okay. Thank you, kendall absolutely.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me oh, it was a true delight.
Speaker 1:Okay, Heartlifters, join me and reserve your spot for Kendall's Lenten Bake and Pray. Starters will be mailed out on February 24th, so be sure to go to kendallvanderslicecom. The spelling of that will be in the show notes, so reserve your spot and I'll see you there. And also, if you would be so remarkable, Heartlifter, would you please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review? Yes, we want to expand the reach of our words and our community and, if you can, please make a tax-deductible donation to Heart Lift International and be one of our supporters so that we can keep this beautiful podcast going and commercial-free. All that information is in the show notes. Until next time, remember you have value, worth and dignity.
