Who Could Ask for Anything More?
March 1, 2005
Years ago, my Friday nights were not the nights to relax and socialize. They were not the end of a work week. Indeed, they were the longest of my days. Years ago, I started work at midnight on Friday, and didn’t finish until noon on Saturday. I would work straight through with no breaks. I couldn’t take a break – that would break the rhythm of the bread.
I was the sole baker for a bistro that was known for its bread, a light rye. I made the bread every morning, and it was then used to make the Bistro’s sandwiches that day. The bread was also sold to other restaurants in town, as well as at the open-air market on Saturday mornings. I would spend the first six hours of my Friday night shift completely alone – well, sort of alone. The ovens were at the front of the bistro and there was a large glass window facing out to the street. This was to attract the attention of walkers by, who theoretically would see bread being freshly made, and be enticed to enter. While I usually enjoyed the window and the people watching, on Friday nights, just after ‘closing time’, the window attracted the attention of all the Friday night revelers who had just spent the evening at the sports bar across the street. Often, I would be working while strangers, probably seeing three or four of me baking inside, pressed their faces up to the glass and sent me blowfish kisses (at least that’s what I decided to call them). I would wave and continue with my work. I couldn’t stop – that would break the rhythm of the bread.
I started baking because I was told I couldn’t.
My initial role at the Bistro was as a “lunch counter sandwich maker”. I worked 8 hours a day making minimum wage and I loved it. The people I worked with there felt like family to me. We worked together, ate together and genuinely cared about each other. We were all upset when Frank, the owner, challenged by having two locations open while he moved the Bistro to a new site, needed to reduce his labour costs and was therefore forced to cut our hours. I couldn’t afford to lose hours, and since our baker was leaving, I proposed that I take on his responsibilities in addition to my regular position. Frank responded with a big laugh and said that I could not possibly do the baking – I was a girl, and was therefore not strong enough. How would I lift the Hobart mixer bowl full of dough? Well, he might as well have waved a red flag in front of a bull. I insisted that I could do the job, although I might do it differently than a big strong virile male baker! Frank gave me a chance to prove myself and I started baking the following week. My fate was sealed.
I was not an instant success story as a baker. The recipe for the rye bread that I was taught to follow was one passed down from Frank’s grandmother in Czechoslovakia. It was a spoonful of yeast, 3 buckets of flour, etc … not just any spoonful, this spoon full; not just any bucket, this bucket. It’s a recipe that can never be replicated. Knead the dough together until smooth and elastic. Let it rise. Punch it down. Cut the dough. Shape it into loaves. Proof the loaves. Bake the loaves. Start again.
Baking takes attention. Bread is alive. It starts from nothing and needs care and attention to develop into a beautiful loaf. It’s like gardening, only it takes less time to see the final result. The baker has to pay attention to the dough and attend to its needs. Bread needs nurturing. Time and temperature are the keys to success. Try to rush the job, try to proof the bread at too high or low a temperature, and you’ll end up with ‘bad bread’. I certainly made my fair share of ‘bad bread’ – bread whose crumb is too loose with holes throughout, bread that just didn’t rise enough and looks small and ashamed, bread that over-rose and burst open with too much zeal, bread that didn’t brown enough in the oven, bread that browned too much. It takes time to learn how to make good bread. It’s all about timing and rhythm, and it takes practice to understand the rhythm of the bread.
After a few weeks, I found my rhythm, and it was wonderful! It was like finally getting a dance step right. I began to really enjoy my bread-making time, and actually looked forward to my long Friday nights. I danced the night away each week, all by myself.
Come Friday at midnight, I would arrive at the Bistro alone and in the dark. The light switch was all the way at the back of the restaurant, forcing me to walk a good distance in the dark before I could turn the lights on. I marched back, clapping and singing the whole time to chase away all the unwanted creatures that lurked in that old building, pretending each time that they didn’t scare me to death. I would turn on the ovens and load the first of a sequence of music cds into the cd player. Then, I’d begin the first batch of dough: this spoonful of yeast, 3 of this bucket full of flour, etc. The Hobart would knead the dough. Unlike the previous baker, I did not lift the heavy Hobart mixing bowl full of dough onto the counter (although I did prove to myself that I could later on!). Only a crazy person would try to lift that bowl when you can simply take the dough out of the bowl and haul it onto the cutting bench leaving the bowl behind. I’d then let the first batch rise while the Hobart kneaded the second batch. Once the second batch was up on the cutting bench, starting its first rise, I’d get the third batch mixing and cut the first batch into the right size for the loaves I was making and shape them accordingly. With my first batch of dough shaped and arranged on the sheet pans in an orderly fashion, I’d slide them into the proofing oven, start cutting the second batch, letting the third batch rise and start mixing the fourth. By the time I was cutting the third batch, rising the fourth, mixing the fifth, it was time for the first batch to start baking and for the second batch to head into the proofing oven. I was dancing. I had rhythm.
And so, I continued this way through the night, through the drunk fools gaping at the window, through the beautiful sunrise, through the arrival of my Bistro family one by one, and on into the morning. I had finally found the rhythm and I couldn’t stop for fear of losing it.
They say that bread is the staff of life. Bread, in some form or another is made around the globe, and bread-making has been around for some six thousand years. It’s considered the staff of life and yet today, we take bread for granted. Most of us buy our bread from a store that supplies it in bulk. It is made in factories where the dough is never touched by human hand and the temperature and time is regulated by machine. Every loaf looks the same. It has no character, no charm. Our involvement with bread lasts about 5 minutes – as long as it takes us to get it from the shelf to the cashier. After all, how many of us have the time to make our own bread these days?
I succumb to this way of thinking most of the time, but now and then I get the need to make bread again. It grounds me, slows me down, and gives me a better understanding of life and what it means to be alive. It’s a process – a process where you can take ingredients, nurture them and make them into something beautiful that fills your house with its aroma and puts smiles on faces. Perhaps if we all made our own bread we’d have a better smelling world with happier people. After all, if you’re making a lot of bread, ya’gotta have rhythm, and if ya’ got rhythm, who could ask for anything more?