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Hutchinson woman wins KWC Bread Basket honorTo Denise Pounds, bread-making is equal parts passion and art, combined with a dash of home-made talent. Pounds' Outstanding Bread Basket submission in the 2009 Kansas State Fair was presented to State Fair Board President Tom Tunnell, and earned the Hutchinson woman a purple ribbon and $100 cash prize from the Kansas Wheat Commission. Her bread basket was made from woven strips of bread, and featured as contents an artisan asiago cheese bread, pretzel sticks shaped like heads and stalks of wheat, and an assortment of other delicacies. The basket itself took three attempts and an entire day to craft, says Pounds, who entered the Kansas Wheat Commission Bread Basket Contest for the first time. "The contest gave me the inspiration to make an object out of bread dough and I'd never done that before. I took a large bowl and turned it upside down, and wove strips of bread dough together and put little wheat heads around the edge," she explains. "I tried different kinds of wheat flours in the different breads to give it variety and made the pretzel sticks into the shape of wheat." Bread baking is a natural extension of Pounds' curiosity about cooking. That bread making is a challenge gives it an allure not shared with other foods, she says. "The whole process of creating bread; the baking, the aroma--just knowing you started with basic ingredients and it develops into something interesting. You can prepare and bake the same way every time, yet it comes out different. Bread-baking combines a little science, with a little intrigue," she says. Pounds' interest in bread-making started a few years ago, when she vowed that for an entire year, her family would eat only bread she baked. She claims she never got any better; but when classes became available at a local cooking store, she signed up and gained a true knack for bread-making. With experience under her belt, Pounds now uses multiple flours and ingredients to create gifts for family and friends. "It's always fun to try different things. I'm exploring some directions in whole grains and that's kind of a challenge. I tried some buck wheat and, amaranth, just to incorporate different flours," she explains. Pounds finds that as far as hobbies go, bread-making is relatively easy on the pocketbook. "You know, that's the nice thing about bread, flour is inexpensive, and there is not a lot of money in ingredients. That's another reward for doing this type of cooking. I do have a little bit of time involved, however," she says. Winning the State Fair award was a thrill for Pounds. However, it doesn't compare to the good feeling of making from scratch, a baked good that friends and family truly enjoy. "When you share something with someone else, you want it to be good. So, it's my goal to give someone something that's just really good; something that's definitely handmade. It's a passion of mine," she says.
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