Mom's Recipe

Grimacing, Joan registered that she was rummaging through the kitchen drawer in the exact way her husband hated. She sighed, then hunted with renewed vigor - damage already done. Gotcha! In her hand, Joan held a miniature digital scale. She allowed herself a triumphant smile. Lightning flashed in the corner of her eye. Squinting down, she evaluated the damage done to the drawer’s once orderly contents.

She shifted on her feet and shuffled utensils until they all faced the same general direction. The task did little to distract from the prickling beneath her skin. Joan shook her hands out, trying to rid them of the sensation. After closing the drawer with a stiff, apologetic pat, she returned to the counter, prize in hand. Over the music blaring from speakers nearby, she could hear another crash of thunder and feel it rumble through her chest.

Some day off this was. She had planned to nap well into the afternoon. At the very least, she should be laying in bed doomscrolling. The raging storm had jolted her awake to a gray early morning sky. Her stubbornness only survived a few minutes of tossing and turning after that. Joan placed the scale down with more force than intended. She focused her eyes on the spidery scrawling that comprised her mother’s recipe book.

[1. Dissolve yeast (2 tsp) in warm water (1/4 cup). Rest 10-15 minutes.]

The double lines under ‘warm’ meant around 100 degrees Fareheit. Joan ran the faucet over her hand until the water was slightly warm to the touch.

“The yeast is a living thing, you know.” Her mother never failed to remind her, even now. “Wake them up nice and gentle. Imgaine if I woke you up for school with a bucket of cold water. You certainly wouldn’t be in a cooperative mood.”

The yeast, still biting cold from its refrigerated slumber, soon followed in heaping quantities.

“That’s cheating a bit, but I don’t think the yeast mind.”

Joan stirred the beige slurry until the yeast dissolve into a watery paste. She sets the timer on the stove. Any much longer than 15 minutes to themselves and the yeast would start fermenting.

“Those critters wake up hungry, and they won’t wait around to be fed either.”

Not in the mood for sourdough, Joan got to work on reading their breakfast.

[2. Scald milk (125 g). Add butter (2 tbsp) and sugar (100 g). Let cool to room temperature.]

Her metal bowl dwarfed the digital scale. It was the biggest one she had - of both. Mom had been a meaure-with-your-heart type. It was rare for her to give specific instructions, let alone down to the gram. Once the milk and sugar were measured, Joan turned a knob until the front burner came to life with a click and a spark. She placed the bowl directly onto the low burning flame. As it warmed she dropped in two pats of butter. While she rushed to put away leftover ingredients, she wacked her head against the top of the fridge.

Her forehead lit up as sharp pain ran down her neck, melding with the tension in her shoulder blades. Joan opened her eyes once the pain subsided to ignorable levels. She returned to the stove grumbling about how the world was built for short people, kicking the fridge door closed behind her. The butter was just beginning to melt into bright puddles that balanced weightlessly the milk’s surface. As she stirred, granules of raw sugar scraped against the metal bowl. Joan had no idea how to “scald” milk. Once the sugar dissolved, she pulled the bowl from the heat to be safe.

[3. Let cool. Add one whole egg and one yolk. Reserve egg whites. Add yeast.]

Joan covered the metal bowl and chunked it in the fridge. If the consequences were anything less than scrambled eggs in her bread, she would’ve ignored the wait entirely. The bowl was cool to the touch in a few minutes; her fingers left condensation marks on frosted metal. She cracked an egg into the bowl one-handed, like her mother used to.

She spent the next few minutes fishing bits of shattered eggshell out of the horridly thick yellow cream. The second egg would be cracked using both hands. Cradling two halves of the speckled, powder-blue shell over a spare bowl, she shifted the sunny yolk back and forth until it separated from its whites. There was a local who sold marvelous duck eggs at a nearby Lutheran church. The colors alone were worth the guilty conscience from sneaking into the parish hall every other Sunday. As she stirred, the yolks left streaks of oversatured orange so thick they resisted mixing into the pale cream on principle.

[4. Stir in flour (360 g) and salt slowly.]

“Salt’ll kill your yeast. They’re natural born enemies,” mom would say, stirring in the dry ingredients one scoop at a time.

Even on a good day, Joan didn’t care for that level of spoonfeeding. She poured in the flour one third at a time, throwing in a pinch of salt after the first. The dough began coming together, somewhat lumpy and inconsistent, but such is the price of precious time saved.

[5. Knead dough.]

Joan felt needled. When had her mother ever been so concise?

The words said, “just try to get distracted reading me.”

Her mom said, “don’t tell me you weren’t paying attention.”

Joan squeezed her eyes shut, brows furrowed from the effort of sifting through her memories. Why do people teach you so far in advance of when you’ll appreciate them?

One thing was for certain, her mother would haunt her if she put dough into a mixer.

“It’s like going through all the trouble of having a kid, just to send them to military school. If you want some soulless machine making your bread, you might as well go to the grocery store and save yourself the grief.”

Mom’s eyes twinkled liked they always did when she was she’s being quite clever. Once in a blue moon, her mother would look to the heavens for strength and speak plainly.

“Your arms will give out long before you overwork the dough and even longer before the stand mixer gets tired."

Joan shook a fistful of flour over the counter before her. Then, she flopped the dough down.

“Bread develops its personality from how you treat it as dough.”

More nonsense. When the dough was thoroughly caked in flour, she folded it into itself. Turn 90 degrees. Fold. Turn. Fold.

It worked for a good five minutes. Her stubbornness pushed her through for another two, much less good, minutes. The spiteful dough clung half to the linoleum counter and half to her hands. She tamed it again with more flour. A voice in the back of her mind cried out about dry dough.

With a messy hand, she turned the knob on her speaker until she could no longer hear the thunder cracking around her. She turned her back on the window, with its lightning and tears. Fold. Turn. Fold. Dough grabbed the heel of her palm. Turn. She caught herself on her toes, folding the dough with all her strength plus. She stretched the dough. For a moment, she could see the web holding it together. Then, it snapped.

With a sigh, she returned to folding, this time using only her right hand. The other propped her head up on the counter. She was pushing the poor thing past its limits. Fold. Turn. Fold. Yawn. Turn. The dough put up more of a fight to stick together. Soon, it broke the hold, springing up toward its own mass as she lifts it. Joan had long lost track of who was winning and losing their battle.

“You can stop once you get to know the dough. Not just its star sign and favorite color. I mean, really listen. You have to learn its strengths and weaknesses. It’s limits. It’s habits. See the shape it wants to take; try to nudge it in that direction. No sense fighting nature.”

As she and the dough rested for a few minutes, Joan cut off a fist-sized hunk. She held it and let it fall and stretch under its own weight. Turning her hands, it stretched thinner and thinner, until she was sure a sharp look would rip a hole through it. She lifted it up to the light, and it began to glow. Illuminated, she could see the mess of threads holding the fabric together against the insistent and relentless pull of gravity. She was sure if she kept looking, she’d see a pulse, a breath. Instead, she gently placed the sheet down with the rest of itself and shaped it back together like a lump of wet clay.

[6. Form into a smooth ball and place in oiled bowl. Cover and place somewhere warm until it doubles in size (2-3 hours).]

Using her hands as a strange and inefficient squeegee around the back of the dough, she pulled it toward her. It wasn’t any real or proper technique, just motions copied from an old memory. Joan supposed it was smooth enough. Oil glops into the bowl, her fingers leaving dusty fingerprint behind on the tinted glass bottle. She nestled the dough inside. Covered in a soft linen towel, Joan set the dough in a cool oven.

By distracting herself with chores, the time almost went quickly. She even watered the lone ivy on her windowsill, a mess of stems and crispy leaves. Behind it, the rain still feel, but a bit softer and quieter. She ran the faucet and splashed cold water on her face before. Once more, Joan turned to the oven. She approached with apprehension. It had been alone so long. Had it perished in gruesome fashion when her back was turned? It was the salt wasn’t it? She always knew she’d be a horrible - oh. The dough looked back at her with bubbling pockets barely an inch from the bowl’s edge. That might be a bit more than doubling.

[7. Punch down and shape loaf. Cover again. Let proof until loaf doubles in size (1-2 hours). Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.]

With reluctance and pain, she pressed her fist down to the bottom of the bowl. The yeast had been busy at work. Hopefully, they would forgive her. She flopped the deflated football of dough back onto the messy counter. Fold. Turn. Fold. She worked the dough until the last pocket of air hissed and the dough resembled roughly how it started. Weighing the lump, she did some embarrassing marker arithmetic on the back of her hand to divide it into thirds.

It was close to the end, but this was no time to slouch. She rolled the segments out as long as they would go without springing back.

With long strands stretched and lined in a row, she could begin braiding. Left over middle. Right over middle. Left. Right. Gently stretching the strands as she went, keeping tension.

Once she had reached the end of her increasingly small train of braids, she tried to reverse braid the other end. She managed an uneven, lumpy half-braid, which she decided would be the center of the loaf. She coiled the pretty end around it, lifted it up and plopped it onto a baking sheet, tucking the loose end under before the mess could think about unraveling.

Joan covered the loaf before she was tempted to tweak the design and mangle it completely. She let rest on the cool stove as the oven began warming up.

Joan busied herself with cleaning the mess of flour and half-dried dough crusted to the counter. Before the half hour mark, she heard a key scrape into the front door lock. She kept at her task, but allowed herself to perk up a little.

“Hello,” she called.

“Hi, darlin’,” Daren called back. “Oh, it smells nice in here. How much trouble did you get into?”

“I resent that.”

“Noted. Hm, suspect is scrubbing the counter with the dish sponge. Evidence points to a baking related incident.”

“Hardly a smoking gun.”

“You’ve got flour in your hair.”

“I have the right not to incriminate myself.”

“Come on, I solved the mystery. I’m a hero. Don’t I get a reward?”

“You’re not the hard-boiled sort, huh. Hey! No, no, don’t give me that look. Not fair, not fair. Alright! You win, I’ll talk. It’s on the stove - put the sad eyes away, please.”

“No way! Tell me that’s your mom’s sweet bread.”

“It could be.”

“Do you know that you’re an angel? You have no idea the day I had.”