The most wonderful thing about baking the communion bread...
...is that every Sunday after church, there is an extra loaf of fresh bread for lunch.
...is that every Sunday after church, there is an extra loaf of fresh bread for lunch.
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Wow. Your church uses leavened bread for communion? Huh. I'm surprised.
Yup. We're rebellious Protestants. We do have wine along with our grape juice, though. 😉
I've spent all my life in Presbyterian churches, and all of them have used leavened bread, so this seems very normal to me. I much prefer it to those styrofoam-like wafers that some churches use! lol
we use Matza Jews use it for passover.
We always enjoyed that too! Or my mom would use one half of the dough to make cinnamon rolls. Yum!
My church uses homemade loaves that are leavened too - (we're Disciples of Christ), but I remember the wafers from my church growing up. Yuck.
Love the blog - I get some great ideas from it!
BTW - I look at this via Bloglines normally, and there is an ad attached to the bottom of this post for "1 Tip of a Flat Belly - cut down 3 pound of your belly every week by using this one weird tip" - I've never seen an ad attached to a post before. Hope it's not some new BlogHer trend.
Ha! I learned something new! I had to ask my husband what you meant as I had only ever heard of the wafers. Now I know something I didn't know before. And somehow I've sparked a major discussion on religion tonight!
Steph, I've never seen my feed in Bloglines. In my Feedburner feed there is usually a google ad at the bottom of the post, but that's been there for ages.
Maybe Bloglines runs their own ads? That's all I can think if it's something new!
Or are you seeing an ad right here on my site? That shouldn't be the case, as I don't embed ads into my posts here on my blog. Any ads you see here should be in the sidebar.
Calimama, real bread is much better than wafers. lol
I grew up in Baptist and Methodist churches. We used store bought loaves in the Baptist church and I forget what we used in the Methodist (they looked like flour Tortillas.)
We're Orthodox Christians, and our communion bread is called prosphora. It's sparse on ingredients (no oil!) and not good for much other than communion. Sigh! Here's a cool blog post about making it:
http://www.orthodoxmom.com/2009/02/baking-prosphora-athonite-style.html
I'm also surprised you use that kind of bread. I'm also Protestant, but we have always used unleavened bread. I don't think it has anything to do with whether or not your are Protestant or not. It has to do with trying to follow the picture presented in the Scriptures. In the Bible, leaven represents sin, so leaving it out of the communion bread is what has always been considered normal in my sphere.
There are recipes that list unleavened bread. It is more or less like a flat tortilla.
Ahh, but I know there is at least one place where yeast is mentioned in a positive light...if I recall correctly, it's used in an illustration about the church spreading, but I'm iffy on that. I just know there's one positive reference to it. lol
Jesus used unleavened bread because the meal he was participating in was Passover, and Passover bread had no yeast because the Israelites were in a hurry to leave Egypt. So although the yeast/bad stuff references are there in other places in the NT, I'm not entirely convinced that we're not supposed to use leaven in communion bread.
Anyhow, I think that it's totally fine to use unleavened bread, but I think leavened bread is fine too. Most important, I think, is what the elements represent. 🙂
My husband says if it were up to him, he'd go the unleavened route just to be safe, and I can see that point of view. But, it's not up to either of us!
I have wonderful memories of communion bread...A lady in our church made it out of pie crust dough...delicious and buttery! (and unleavened I suppose?:)She would roll it flat and then cut it w/ a cutting wheel. My dad was our pastor and on occasion he'd have too much left over and we got to snack on it!:)
We keep kosher at Passover, which means no leavened products whatsoever. So we eat matzah, basically a big square cracker. From this, people try and make all kind of crazy things like matzah bagels and pizza (by grinding it up and reshaping it) (yuck) instead of just enjoying what it is and/or sacrificing for a week. Anyway, your post made me think about that. My son and I happen to love matzah and eat it throughout the year topped with cream cheese or jam or peanut butter but most Jews (including my husband, who makes it through through Passover only by eating "granola" that I made from crushed matzah and fruit and nuts) would think that's crazy.
Would love to have your recipe... We are Presbyterian who have just 'merged' 3 local churches here in El Paso, Texas
I and another member of the congregation are sharing the baking of the communion breads...
What a joy it is to be able to share my gift of baking with this new church 'Grace Presbyterian' and our congregation.
Here's the one I use: https://www.thefrugalgirl.com/2009/03/wednesday-baking-whole-wheat-bread/