In the twelve by fifteen foot kitchen in the house on Berrien Street, Clara Sandburg baked bread every few days. She may have taken the flour from a barrel kept in a dry place free of insects. She mixed flour with yeast, water, a little sugar and fat and put it aside in a warm place to rise. Then, she kneaded the dough to develop the gluten in the flour and set the mixture aside to rise again.

Kneading bread dough requires muscle as well as a delicate touch to make good bread. After a second rising, the dough was shaped and placed in bread pans. The loaves were baked after the third rising. Clara would have made sure the fire in the cast iron kitchen stove was just right for baking the loaves with a golden crust. From experience, she knew how hot the heat in the oven should feel against her hand.

The fragrance of the baking bread surely attracted the children. They could hardly wait until the bread had cooled enough to be sliced and buttered for eating. During the hard times of the 1890s, the family spread lard or molasses on the homemade bread rather than butter.

Mrs. Sandburg made a pork chop sandwich for Carl's lunch when he worked in the ice harvest on Lake George. The slices of bread would have been thick and nourishing. When August Sandburg walked home from the Q shops to eat his lunch, his wife probably made a sandwich for him with homemade bread.

Humans have been making bread for at least 30,000 years. The first bread probably consisted of ground seeds mixed with water. Someone discovered that heating it on a hot rock made the food more digestible and improved the taste. Since yeast spores naturally float in the air, the rising of bread attracted attention. Imaginative people figured out that saving a little of the dough for the next day would make a new batch of bread dough rise again.

At the turn of the twentieth century, commercial baking was becoming more common in this country. In order to keep the price low, the bakeries added sawdust and used chemicals to make the dough rise more quickly. People began to buy white bread to be sure there were no impurities and they wanted it soft so they could tell it was fresh. Pure food laws put an end to the use of sawdust, but chemicals are still used to speed the process.

Until the First Work War, many homemakers were proud of their bread baking skill. In order to send food to the war torn countries of Europe, the United States added other grains, such as rye and barley, to flour to make it go farther. The quality of home-baked bread began to suffer and many homemakers stopped preparing bread at home.

Only in more recent years have consumers begun to appreciate artisan breads and to use bread machines in their own homes. Traditional breads of other countries, such as pita and tortillas, have become popular here as well.