When I first arrived in Lipnica Wielka, I was shocked one morning at the small grocer’s in front of the teachers’ housing to see how much bread the women in front of me were buying. It solved a mystery, though. I’d discovered that if I arrived too late, sometimes simply in the mid-morning hours, there was no bread to be found.

“Nie ma” was the curt reply.

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Standing in line that morning, though, seeing woman after woman buy two, three, sometimes four loaves of bread, I understood why. It wasn’t until I saw the same woman buy the same amount the next day that I realized her family ate that much bread in a single day.

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The loaves themselves looked like nothing I’d ever seen for sale in grocery stores. I knew you could get stuff like that — hard and crusty on the outside, thick and hearty on the inside — at bakeries and such specialty stores, but in a regular Food Lion or Kroger?

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When K and I first moved to the States, finding a good source for good bread was of primary grocery-shopping importance. Who knew we had a source right there?