I measure out the ingredients, careful to keep the wet from the dry; two thirds liquid, body temperature and almost imperceptible to the touch, two percent this, one percent that, until they are ready to be combined, to become a sticky ball. The surface, lightly floured, is marble, as solid as it is cool.
I carefully scoop it out of the bowl with both hands, my fingertips floured when wet works better, loosely holding one end then slapping down the other, folding over, turning around, my palette, white and shovel shaped, scrapes the surface bringing in rogue crumbs.
The motion is whirlwind, automatic. It takes seconds. I repeat it. This action will last several minutes, a disco music rhythm in the background helps, its base beat matching perfectly the machinations of making my loaf. Music gives me an energy in the same way bread energises my body. Bread baking is rhythmic movements of ballet with the slapping and punching brutality of boxing. It is the only violence acceptable in the kitchen.
Baby, boy to man, baking bread has always been there. I am transported. Back to a time when I was a child, so young my fearless discoveries included the senses themselves.
I practically came into this world with the malty rich aroma of yeast enveloping me like a warm wool (blue for a boy) blanket. The smell pervaded the house, to the furthest corners and to scented paper drawers it would leave subtle hints on the stowed away garments. It was as powerful as it was ingratiating. It was my childhood talc. That simple scent worked through the algorithms of my memories to become the definitive ´one´.
Strong scents, strong arms. My grandmother, with whom we lived, was strong; well, with having four children to lift, raise and feed, and kneading several loaves of bread a week to do so, it should not have been a surprise. I might add that she was not the local baker, just that she had many mouths to feed: our family, the extended family, her eccentric sister who lived in a cupboard during storms, the list was long and the work endless. Those arms would punch, pull and roll. They patted and shaped. Those arms fascinated me, watching them create.
Home then, was outside of a small but important town. Its city walls still standing, still protecting it, from what I don´t know. Modernity perhaps. The ancient Roman ruins giving answers to its foundation. When I went to Rome, I saddened a tour guide with a vague “yes, we have something similar at home”. We did. Just smaller.
The movements that my grandmother made, I later learned, would have made her French contemporary look askance. The action of kneading, a first world war phenomenon, would make the bread a denser, heavier loaf. Intended to make it go further. My movements, my actions, taught to me by a Frenchman, shock the proteins through the dough creating a cloud like lighter loaf, a woven web, rather than a chewy crumb.
Squeezing the ball in my hand I check the stretch, finger the curve and watch to see the resistance, before shaping it into a round and dropping it into a bowl like a potter dropping his clay onto the wheel. I dip my pastry brush into some light oil and glide its glossy hairs across the stretched transparent sheet of film on the marble top. The oil dots like condensation. I carefully lift the film to the bowl, holding it like Saint Veronica, arms stretched outwards, it is a challenge not to accidentally scrunch it up on another object and lose it forever. It seals itself over the rim, oil side down and the waiting begins.
My grandmother would sit me on her knees and envelop me in her arms while we waited for the proving of the dough, her sing song voice telling me the adventures of our ancestors, a disappearance in Russia, a murder in New York. Then we would open the cupboard door and lift the cloth sat atop the bowl to release a gloriously gaseous puff of sweet yet slightly sour yeast and reveal a balloon of dough.
A punch like Ali; five counts, you’re out, I mutter to myself. The winded dough shrivels to a sad shadow of its overinflated self. A few more slaps, flips and twists and it is more carefully shaped ready to be placed in its mould to rise again.
An ironware Dutch Oven blue and round, has been greased, and floured. A disc of paper gets similar treatment before being carefully placed at the bottom of the dish. No such effete methods my grandmother. A simple tin, tarnished and polished, dented and browning from use, was enough to hold the dough. A sprinkling of flour at its base. As practical and sensible as it was waste free.
We had a stove, enamelled, white and fuelled by black nuggets of coal, that it consumed with a fiery hunger. Its metal doors and hot plate covers, coil handled and lined with rope. The shovelling process, noisy, dusty meant that we called it the Queen Mary, after the great cross-Atlantic liner. The nearby bookshelves, filled with an endless library of cookbooks, blackened easily from the soot she gave out. The kitchen needing to be cleaned twice as often as any other room, as any other kitchen. This oven, simple, windowed, technological, modern has been warming, in readiness.
The dough is re-puffed, revitalised, ready.
Carefully, I remove the protective cover of a cutting tool, merely an old-fashioned razorblade, fixed on a plastic handle, but a precision instrument that reveals its lethal steely self nonetheless. I raise it. Music is crescendoing in the background adding to the drama as I aim for the belly of the loaf. One cut to the right, one to the left. Slashed flesh pulling apart. Kitchen dramatics and fancy flourishes where my grandmother would have simply used her sharpened kitchen knife. A chortle breaks my Sweeney Todd revelry, I imagine it is her there, but I am alone, and the laughter is mine.
A blast of heat as I offer the bread to the oven´s gaping mouth. Shutting the door quickly, the timer is put on and I clap, my applause causes small clouds of flour particles to float from my hand.
Bread requires patience, it is a therapy, a meditation. More time is taken on the waiting than on the making. But I am willing the time to move more quickly however, the hands of the clock move slowly. I have cleaned the surfaces, the utensils, the tools. I have made some coffee, its mellow fragrance temporarily impacting on the yeasty aromas infusing the house. I am pacing. I am not patient.
The alarm finally breaks me out from my distracted thoughts. The heat blast from the oven door blinds me. Not literally, my glasses are steamed up and I have to reach out and feel for the pot. On the surface the Dutch oven reveals a caramel crust, a golden dome.
My grandmother would shake the tin and throw the bread on a rack on the kitchen table surface. The oblong two-pound loaf would right itself ready to cool. No tapping, no piercing. I have to use my strength to twist and shake the ironware to let the bread fall out. It is iron. It is hot. It is heavy. The bread moves slowly, sighing on to the table surface, round and upside down. I feel the relief of relaxing muscles. Peeling the paper off the bottom I lift the loaf to my ear tapping the crust, listening for the dull woody knock. The signal that the liquid has mostly left but the pitch of sound confirms a moist texture behind the crust.
The bread is placed on a rack to cool down to room temperature or just above. Warm bread is not good for you. It upsets the stomach. But I take a childish pleasure in cutting a warm crust and slathering it with salted butter, watching it glisten as it softens on the bread´s surface. Worse things have hit my gut, so I don´t worry. The first slice is selfishly mine.
The crunch as the knife cuts through the surface, crumbing crusty confetti on the surface of the breadboard (and around), is satisfying to the ear. It is a deeply curved corner that I pave with slabs of butter. So deep that my bite, crusty, springy, buttery, leaves grease on my nose. I almost look around to see if there are witnesses to my guilty pleasure but thankfully no one can see my sensual shame.
My grandmother, always baking to share, would never be so mean. Her crusty first cut was always offered out. She would wait until last to make sure everyone got a fair portion even if it meant less for her. If love was measured in food, she was the bready feast.
So engaging !!! Felt like I was as there with you !!!…x