Stones for Bread

by Parrish, Christa

  Placing the dustpan on the floor, she comes behind me and begins moving the broom, rocking me and sweeping broken bread all at the same time. I lean back against her. She hums and we sweep, and she tells me, It will come again, Liesl. Grief always does. And in the face of it, you’ll need to decide if you’ll step over the pieces and leave them to be trampled, or if you’ll gather them up for salvage.

  I don’t know what salvage means, but understand the crumbs cannot stay on the floor. We finish cleaning, the mess emptied into a bentwood basket given to my mother by Oma; it carried some of their belongings from Germany to their new home here in America. Mother hands it to me and I open the lid of the trash pail, but she stops me. Take it outside for the animals.

  I do, sowing the pieces like seeds beneath the Rose of Sharon where the hummingbirds come for nectar. Before I finish, a chipmunk scampers over from its hiding place in the drain spout, pads its cheeks full of bread with disconcertingly human-like hands, and runs away toward the greenhouse, carrying my grief with it.

  Cecelia blows bubbles into her chocolate milk through a straw, the sticky sacs of air mounding at the top of her glass and then popping, one by one, splattering tiny droplets onto the table. It annoys me, the glub-glub-glub sound, but she takes such delight in her frothy accomplishments I can’t bring myself to stop her. I have Gretchen swing through with a damp rag and wipe the mess every few minutes.

  Tee gives her the milk so dark it looks like the Mississippi flooded into the cup. I can’t imagine Tee using any sort of bottled Hershey’s or Nesquik, and I’m right. She makes her own syrup, whisking Dutch-process cocoa and home-brewed vanilla extract with sugar and salt and water. And her secret ingredient, which she pulls from her pocket in a little fabric pouch and sprinkles over the boiling pot, scowling at me when I peek at her a few seconds too long. That’s the other reason I won’t tell Cecelia to stop slurping and splashing, because Tee doesn’t leave for another twenty minutes. She’s taken what my father would call “a shine” to the girl, and heaven help anyone who crosses Tee and the things she loves. I see how she protects her skillet and the apples for tomorrow’s soup. This is her zayka, her little bunny.

  Gretchen and I bag the leftover bread; I leave two loaves of white sandwich aside for Seamus to take with him when he picks up Cecelia, which could be in ten minutes or two hours. I don’t mind. I’m here and the girl is no trouble. And I suppose it was my idea.

  Two Fridays ago Seamus arrived with my flour delivery, late as usual but yet to make the same mistake as he did the first time, dragging a mess through the bakehouse. He brought in the bags and handed me a clipboard to sign, his manner much more brisk and unfriendly than usual. Then Cecelia’s face appeared between our elbows.

  “I told you to wait in the truck,” Seamus said.

  “I know, but I wanted to see Liesl.” She shifted from one leg to another. “And I hafta, you know.”

  “Can she use your restroom?”

  “Sure, of course,” I said. “Gretchen can take you.”

  “I know where it is,” Cecelia said, glancing around the kitchen. She wrinkled her nose. “Once I get out of here.”

  “Come on, honey. Through this door,” Gretchen said, leading with a hand gently pressed on her shoulder blade.

  “Thanks,” Seamus said. “And sorry. She had someone watching her after school, but I just can’t manage that anymore. Not with all the money I just put into this stinkin’ clunker.” He jabbed his thumb at the truck.

  “So she rides around with you?”

  “I try to finish up by five so she won’t have to sit too long. But, yeah. I pick her up at two thirty and, well, that’s that.”

  Seamus looked smaller. His size hadn’t changed, but the layer of pride we all have beneath our skin, the one reminding us how well we care for our own, that had lost some of its girth. I’d seen it in my own father, as one business venture after another failed. In my mother, as dishes piled up and cocoons of dust huddled in corners and her dark moments overcame her. No one should have to shrink this way. “I guess you could bring her here.”

  “What?”

  “After school. She can stay here.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Gretchen leaves at five, and I’m always in the kitchen until at least seven. She can do her homework or whatever.”

  “She’s in kindergarten.”

  “Then she can do whatever she does while she’s driving around in the truck with you.”

  Seamus laughed. “Talk, mostly.”

  “I believe it.”

  “Liesl, thank you.” And then he crowed. Literally lifted his fists into the air and cock-a-doodle-dooed like a fat, fortyish Peter Pan. When he brought his arms down, he closed them around me, the briefest squeeze, but long enough for me to breathe in Mennen and the workday soured on his shirt. He went, holding his daughter’s hand, some of his plumpness returned.

  Cecelia integrates herself into the rhythm of the bakehouse. She colors and drinks her milk and eats the grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches Tee prepares for her, thick wedges of bread coated with mayonnaise and fried brown. She charms the few late customers who come in to grab a loaf for supper. And even Gretchen, who declares several times a week she will never have children, allows the girl to follow her, filling napkin holders and saltshakers and scrubbing handprints off the front window.

  The phone rings. My hands are in dough. I call, “Gretchen, could you get that?”

  “She not here,” Tee says. “I send her to Coop for the chives you forgot yesterday.”

  I sigh. “Well, could you—”

  “I not secretary.” She turns her back to me, flips the sautéing vegetables in her pan.

  “Tee,” I say, but she begins humming.

  “The phone’s ringing,” Cecelia calls, spinning through the kitchen door. She holds the cordless receiver.

  “Just a sec.”

  I begin peeling dough from my fingers. Cecelia pushes a button. “Hello. Thank you for calling Wild Rise. This is Cecelia. How may I help you?” She grins, having repeated Gretchen’s script perfectly. “Yes. Just one moment, please.”

  She covers the mouthpiece with her hand. “It’s for you. Somebody from something-something. She talks really fast.”

  “That’s okay. Just come stick it here.” She holds it next to my head until I can clamp it between my ear and shoulder. “Hello?”

  “Is this Liesl McNamara?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Patrice Olsen and I’m a producer for Bake-Off with Jonathan Scott. Are you aware that one of your employees, a Gretchen Manske, submitted your bakery for consideration to be on our show?’”

  “She mentioned something like that,” I mumble. This is not happening.

  “It’s my pleasure to inform you that you’ve been selected. Congratulations.” She doesn’t sound pleased.

  My neck cramps. I rush to the sink, wash my hands, and look for a towel. I snap my fingers at Cecelia and point to the one across the room. She rushes to grab it and Tee sighs loudly. She’s forever ordering me to wear an apron, but I’ve never been comfortable in one; they were my mother’s realm. I swipe my palms over the rear of my jeans and reach up for the phone, but it slips through my still-damp fingers. Cecelia and I both crouch to find it, the towel forgotten, and I fish it out from beneath a metal rolling cart.

  “Sorry. I dropped the phone.”

  “That happens all the time. The excitement and all. Let me verify your e-mail address and I will send you all the necessary rules and regulations, contracts, release forms, and other paperwork. You may want an attorney to approve them for you. We at Bake-Off and the Good Food Channel are not liable for any misunderstanding you—”

  “What if I don’t want to be on the show?”

  Silence. Then, “Pardon me?”

  “I’m not sure I want to do this.”

  Patrice clears her throat. Again. I hear her sip some liquid and swallow. “Of course, that’s your choice,
Ms. McNamara. I do want to mention, though, Mr. Scott was very complimentary of you and”—papers shuffle—“Wild Rise. And I haven’t yet told you about one of the rather large changes to the upcoming season, which you would be featured on, should you agree.”

  “Which is?”

  “The ten-thousand-dollar prize. If you win. If you don’t, it’s donated to a charity of Mr. Scott’s choice.” She pauses. “I don’t suppose you could find a use for that kind of money.”

  I swallow. “I’ll look at the information.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  I doubt that.

  Patrice solicits the answers to a few more questions and promises I’ll find all I need to know in my e-mail box by the close of business today.

  “Sorry I took so long,” Gretchen says, two canvas produce bags draped over her shoulder. “There was an accident on Baxter. What’s going on?”

  I toss the phone at her, still working to comprehend the five-minute call. “You’re fired.”

  Wild Yeast Starter

  LIESL’S NOTES :

  Warmth is vitally important for proper yeast development; it may be difficult to grow a starter during colder months.

  The formula below utilizes observation and some approximation along with its precise measurements. Because wild yeast are living organisms and the other variables—temperature, time, flour, water—also change even from day to day, culturing a starter is far from an exact science. There is often much trial and even more error. Don’t be surprised if a first or second attempt fails. The success, however, is well worth the effort.

  INGREDIENTS :

  water (in all instances, the temperature should be approximately 85 degrees Fahrenheit or feel neutral to the touch)

  rye flour

  white all-purpose or bread flour

  EQUIPMENT :

  kitchen scale (optional but recommended)

  1-quart (or larger) glass jar or bowl with lid (or plastic wrap to cover)

  spatula or dough scraper

  instant-read thermometer (optional but recommended)

  wooden spoon

  transparent tape

  permanent marker

  DAY ONE, MORNING

  Add 100 grams water (1 cup), 50 grams rye flour (⅜ cup), and 50 grams white flour (⅜ cup) to a clean, dry jar. Mix thoroughly and then scrape the sides of the jar or bowl with the spatula or dough scraper to make the culture level easier to see. Use a piece of transparent tape and marker to indicate the culture’s level.

  Cover and leave the culture in a warm area for 24 hours, ideally around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. If using a screw-on or snap-on lid, do not tighten; allow it to rest loosely on the jar to allow gases to escape.

  DAY TWO, MORNING

  Inspect the jar to see if the culture has risen or if there are bubbles. (If neither is present, allow the culture to rest for another 12 hours.) Discard 75 grams of the culture (approximately ⅓ cup). Add 75 grams water (⅓ cup), 25 grams rye flour (5 teaspoons), and 50 grams white flour (⅓ cup). Again mix well, scrape the sides of the jar, and record the level with tape and marker.

  DAY TWO, EVENING

  (AS CLOSE TO 12 HOURS LATER AS POSSIBLE)

  Repeat steps from Day Two, Morning.

  DAY THREE, MORNING

  Repeat steps from Day Two, Morning. The culture may appear unresponsive, but continue anyway.

  DAY THREE, EVENING—AND EVERY 12 HOURS

  THERE AFTER

  Repeat steps from Day Two, Morning. The culture should become livelier with each feeding. When the culture doubles in volume over a 12-hour period and is quite bubbly, begin feeding with a mixture of 75 grams culture (⅓ cup), 75 grams water (⅓ cup), and 75 grams white flour (⅓ cup plus 5 teaspoons); this can take 7 to 10 days. (When the culture doubles itself in 8 hours or less, it is ready to use as a starter; however, do not refrigerate until after at least one full week of feedings.)

  STORING THE STARTER

  Since a starter is comprised of living organisms, it needs to be fed regularly or it dies. A starter left at room temperature needs to be fed a minimum of once a day at a ratio of at least 1:2:2, meaning one part starter, two parts water, and two parts white flour. This ratio is by weight. (Without a scale, approximate one part water to two parts flour by volume.) Many professional bakers recommend keeping a starter at room temperature for at least 30 days.

  Home bakers, however, who are not making bread every day or who have busy lives and can’t spend a month remembering to feed a jar of starter every 12 to 24 hours may want to store it in the refrigerator after it matures (again, after about 7 days). Keep the starter in a glass jar or bowl; the container should be no more than half full. While many starters have been revived after long periods of dormancy in the refrigerator, it is best to routinely feed it to prevent diminished performance or accidental death. Once a week is a good guideline. Choose a day of the week—perhaps every Monday?—and remove the jar from the refrigerator. Take 75 grams (⅓ cup) of the starter and place it in a clean, dry jar or bowl. Again begin feeding this starter at a 1:2:2 ratio, so add 150 grams water (⅔ cup) and 150 grams white flour (1⅛ cups). Discard the remaining starter, freeze it, or use in baking. Continue to feed the new jar of starter every 12 hours until it doubles in size—usually two feedings is sufficient. Refrigerate and feed again next week.

  Seamus comes to pick up Cecelia and wants to know about all the commotion.

  “Liesl’s gonna be on TV,” his daughter says, her sparse eyebrows lifted as high as she can make them go, nearly to the center of her forehead. “For real.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “Probably not.”

  “I think not,” Tee says from the stove. “She is rooster.”

  “Chicken,” Gretchen says.

  Tee frowns at the correction. “If you are clever as you think, you do not give her photo to television cooking show.”

  “But she made it.”

  “A cooking show?” Seamus asks.

  “The one we watch, Daddy. The one where the guy goes to different places and tries to beat them.”

  “They’re all like that.”

  “Bake-Off,” Gretchen says.

  “You have to do it, Liesl,” Cecelia begs. “Please, please, please? Maybe I can be on TV too.”

  The room spins with all the voices and people and the different odors on their breaths. Chocolate milk. Orange Tic Tacs. Something fishy, like tuna salad or perhaps liverwurst. Onions. I can’t find a speck of clean, silent air.

  “Okay, everyone out.”

  They stop and stare at me.

  “I mean it.”

  No one speaks. Tee turns off the stove and packs away the food she’s prepared for tomorrow’s lunch. Seamus zips Cecelia’s bag, not stopping to put the crayons back in the box but simply sweeping them into the main pouch with everything else. Gretchen takes a stainless steel bowl from the rack hanging above the dough prep table. “I’ll start the breadsticks, then.”

  “Even you, Gretchen. Go.”

  “You’re seriously firing me?”

  “No. I’ll see you at nine tomorrow.” I rub my hand along my jawline, over a painful nodule close to my ear. A stress pimple already. It hadn’t been there an hour ago. “I just need some alone time now.”

  I lock the door behind everyone and open my notebook, listing all the things Gretchen usually takes care of so I won’t forget anything, lest Ginny Moren come looking for her sticky buns in the morning and find none. “Sticky buns? Might as well stick them to my buns!” she says every time she buys her two, shaking the bag near her already ample backside. I flip through to find a few more simple, time-worn recipes and prepare the dough for them too, cheating with the stand mixer when I usually knead by spoon and hand. I’m tired. And for the first time in a long time, I don’t want to be making bread.

  I finish, finally, and go upstairs. Turn on the computer. An e-mail from Patrice Olsen waits for me. I ignore it, but navigate over to the Good Food Channel and find a past episode of
Bake-Off to watch online. I’ve seen pieces of it previously but force myself to sit through an entire show now. I don’t hate it, almost appreciate the respect shown for those participating and their abilities, unlike other cooking competitions. I click over to Jonathan Scott’s bio.

  He apprenticed in a Parisian boulangerie.

  I suddenly want France so badly it fills my mouth in a rush of saliva. My mother had been there once as a child but remembered nothing of the trip, except for slipping on the uneven cobbles in the rain and scraping her knee. Grandmother, there too, recalled much more. And while fully believing all things German superior, especially the bread, she had a baker’s admiration for the pain des Françaises. She told her daughter, and later me, about loaves in every shade of earth, with flavors just as deep and armors of crust around them. My mother saved for years to return, putting away what she earned selling her bread and any little extra she could scrape together buying store brands and going without new panty hose. Not long before my grandmother died, all those pennies added up to more than enough for a round-trip plane ticket to Paris.

  And all those pennies ended up given to my father.

  He needed the money to get out from under yet another failed business venture. For years resentment grew within me over this transaction between husband and wife, something I wasn’t supposed to know about but learned by overhearing my mother speaking on the telephone to a friend. She sounded defeated, and I hated my father and his ineptitude for robbing her of a dream when she had so little of them left. Once, while I was in high school, I told him so in a venomous rant, spilling all those things I’d kept inside since finding my mother dead in the garage when I was twelve. Would she still be alive if he hadn’t stolen that money from her? “You left her with nothing,” I said.

  My gentle father, who began wilting the day he lost his beloved and would never again straighten, said, “Do you think I could make her do anything? If I had that kind of power, she would be with us now.”

  I didn’t believe him then, and I saved so I could go in her stead. In the beginning it was to honor her, and then it grew larger than that. The bread called. I quit my job. I planned a three-month tour of France and Germany, mapping out both famous and little-known bakeries throughout the countries. I would travel by bicycle and train and bus. I would sleep in hostels. And I would feast and learn and come home changed.