Herbed Bread Twists

The house was quiet in the way houses with grown children are quiet — a quiet that contains memory. The week was a winter week, the kind where the light through the kitchen window arrives at a particular angle and the freezer hums in a different register depending on the temperature in the garage. I made notes in my prep notebook on Sunday afternoon, the way I always do: meal name, ingredient list, cost per serving, prep time, freezer instructions. Twenty-eight bags. Two hours and eleven minutes. A little slow this week, by my standards, but Brandon was helping and the conversation was good, and I have learned, slowly and against my own grain, that the conversation is sometimes the point and the time is sometimes a courtesy I extend to my husband for being willing to chop onions on a Sunday afternoon.

The children are doing what they do, which is the central report of every week of my adult life. Ethan is 20, in Manila on his mission, and his last email mentioned a chicken adobo so good he is going to make me make it when he comes home. Olivia is 18, at BYU studying elementary education — the path she chose at age seven and has not deviated from once. Mason is 16, finishing high school, with calluses on his hands and a plan that does not yet have words. Lily is 14, in high school, asking the kind of questions in Sunday School that make the teachers uncomfortable, which I find difficult and also, secretly, admirable. Noah is 11, the comedian, the performer — the kid who does an impression of my disappointed face in front of company, and gets away with it. That is the family report. I do not have a system for these reports. I just listen and remember and call back when I said I would call back, which is most of the time and not all of the time, and the difference between most and all is the territory of motherhood.

I do not preach in this blog. I never have. My faith is in here the way air is in a room — invisible, essential, not discussed. I am still a Latter-day Saint. I am also a woman who has sat in front of a casket the size of a bread box. I do not see those two things as contradictions, but I do not pretend they sit easily together either. The bench in the chapel where I sit on Sunday is the same bench. The woman is not. The faith makes room for the woman. That is what I have learned to ask of it.

The recipe of the week was beef stew, which I have made some specific number of times in my life and have refined to a system that I now hand to other people in printed form. The version I made this week fed eight, cost under fifteen dollars, and required twenty-six minutes of active prep, which is within my requirements and not a coincidence. I taught a freezer meal class this week and someone cried at the cost-per-serving column on the handout. I took the cry as a compliment. I have stopped explaining the freezer-meal philosophy to people who already follow my work, and I have stopped apologizing for it to people who do not. The philosophy is simple: tomorrow is coming whether you are ready or not. You can either be ready or not. I pick ready.

The week ends the way most of them do — with a labeled bag, a tomorrow, a kitchen light I leave on for no one in particular, and a quiet that holds.

The stew went into twenty-eight labeled bags, and Brandon got credit for the onions, and I got credit for everything else, and that is a fair division. But there is a moment at the end of a prep session when the freezer is full and the kitchen still smells like something and I want to make one more thing — something that does not go into a bag, something that gets eaten tonight, at the table, passed hand to hand. These herbed bread twists are that thing. They are not complicated. They are just warm, and they smell like a kitchen that has been in use all day, and some weeks that is exactly enough.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 14 min | Total Time: 34 min | Servings: 12 twists

Ingredients

1 package (1/4 oz) active dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water (105–115°F)
1 teaspoon sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary, crumbled
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
Flaky sea salt, for finishing

Instructions

Activate the yeast. Combine warm water, sugar, and yeast in a large bowl. Stir gently and let stand 5 minutes until foamy. If it does not foam, start over with fresh yeast.
Make the dough. Add olive oil, salt, and flour to the yeast mixture. Stir until a shaggy dough forms, then turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 4–5 minutes until smooth and elastic. The dough should be soft but not sticky.
Rest the dough. Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a clean towel, and let rest in a warm spot for 10 minutes. You are not looking for a full rise — just enough to relax the gluten.
Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Shape the twists. Divide dough into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a rope about 9 inches long. Fold each rope in half and twist the two strands together 3–4 times. Place on the prepared baking sheet about 1 inch apart.
Make the herb butter. Stir together melted butter, garlic powder, rosemary, thyme, and oregano in a small bowl. Brush generously over each twist. Sprinkle with Parmesan and a pinch of flaky salt.
Bake. Bake 12–14 minutes until golden on the tops and bottoms. The Parmesan should be lightly browned and the kitchen should smell like Sunday.
Serve warm. Transfer to a basket or board and serve immediately alongside soup, stew, or anything that needs something to dip in it.

Nutrition (per serving)

Herbed Bread Twists — Something Warm to Pass Around the Table