Imagine the heavenly aroma of homemade bread baking in the oven as you anticipate biting into a soft, warm slice slathered with butter and honey. Nothing else says love and comfort in quite the same way.

In Still There Was Bread (HarperCollins, 2024), Lisl H. Detlefsen and David Soman celebrate intergenerational connections and the joy of sharing a treasured recipe that can sustain a family through good times and bad.

As this heartwarming story opens, Little Pickle excitedly greets his nana, who’s come to teach him how to make their special family bread. It’s the same recipe for “Nana rolls” his mother learned from her grandmother when she was his age.

As they move through each step, Nana compares their process to how her nana made the rolls a long time ago. First, Nana and Little Pickle gather all the ingredients (eggs, milk, flour, oil, sugar, salt, yeast, water). While theirs came from the grocery store, Nana’s nana “had to collect eggs from the chicken coop and milk a cow to get what she wanted.”

Next, Nana shows Little Pickle how to preheat the electric oven, explaining that her nana baked in a woodburning stove, using the “By guess and by gosh” method. While they can easily combine all their ingredients in a stand mixer, Nana’s nana mixed the dough with a wooden spoon. But there are a couple of things they do the same way: knead the dough by hand, then place it in a big bowl before covering it with a damp towel.

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