Bread on Arrival

by Lou Jane Temple

  Mona stood up, too. There was a customer peering in the window of the cat shop. “Heaven, don’t let Sal get you going. I’m sure the bread convention will be very nice. I’ve got a live one across the street. See you later,” she said as she put down her coffee and walked out the door.

  “I’m right behind you,” Heaven said. “After all, it’s Monday and the open mike is tonight. We’ll be busy, like every Monday night.”

  “Don’t go away mad, H,” Sal called over his shoulder with a chuckle. Heaven had been an easy mark today. She riled up fast.

  Heaven stuck her head back in the shop. “If you don’t watch out I’ll make you eat the bread I baked,” she said and then stuck her tongue out at Sal and ducked out before he could get a retort in. As she crossed the street, she realized she was looking forward to the bread convention. It didn’t even sound boring. Maybe she was getting old.

  Goat Cheese Spread

  10–12 cloves roasted garlic

  Extra virgin olive oil

  8–12 oz. goat cheese

  Because there are only three ingredients in this spread, each one needs to be the best you can find. I’m partial to very olivey olive oil for this dish. The goat cheese can be French, or if you live in an area of the country where local goat cheese is produced, I’m sure your local product would be the thing to use. The garlic should be fresh and have no ammonia odor.

  I like to have roasted garlic around all the time, so I would peel at least six heads of garlic and place the cloves in a shallow baking pan. Drizzle with good olive oil and kosher salt. The salt helps draw out the natural sugar in the garlic and produces the wonderful caramel color we are looking for. Cover the pan with foil and bake in a slow to medium oven about 40 minutes at 325–350 degrees. Uncover at this point. Your garlic should be soft and starting to turn brown. Bake uncovered for ten minutes. Cool and store in refrigerator. If you don’t have the time or patience to peel garlic and already peeled cloves are not available to you, split whole heads of garlic in two and roast as we would the peeled cloves, with olive oil and kosher salt, with the cut side down. You have to squeeze the garlic out of the roasted heads like you would toothpaste, so you can’t measure with great accuracy but I think a whole head’s worth of garlic paste should be added to this amount of spread.

  Place the goat cheese and the garlic in a food processor and turn on, drizzling in the olive oil while the processor is running until you reach a good spreading consistency. Use within 24 hours.

  A great option is to change the kind of oil, from olive to walnut or hazelnut. This gives a wonderful change in the flavor of the spread.

  Two

  Sunlight hit the row of ‘Illinois Bundle Flower’ Walter Jinks was walking down, shading his eyes with an upheld hand as he walked. This first walk of the day was his favorite. It was just before seven and Walter had completed his rounds, an inspection tour that he made every morning. Central Kansas was still hot in September, and Walter wiped his brow with a faded red bandana.

  These grasses and grains, the product of twenty-five years of work, were doing well. They had produced a crop of seeds this year that was a much better yield than last year. And now the plants were still working, their roots storing up nutrients, preparing for the cold weather. Next spring Walter was sure that these plants would produce again.

  He stopped at the limestone building that had been a mill since farmers first came to this place, a hundred plus years ago. The wooden sluices for the water had been replaced, of course, and the grinding stones were now turned by a turbine engine most of the time instead of water power. Aside from those technical changes, the building had remained true to its purpose. Walter liked that. He stepped inside.

  It was here that the graduate students who worked with him ground the various grains and grasses into flour, searching for the combination that would satisfy a world that loved wheat bread. As he idly opened the lids of the bins filled with ground vegetation, he straightened with pride. Nothing he had done before had the possibilities of this.

  He had believed he was right when he led the Moratorium in Washington those many long years ago. He knew his efforts had helped LBJ decide not to run for the presidency again, perhaps had shortened that awful war. But that was just child’s play.

  If the world was going to accept bread made out of these flours, he knew he would have to improve the taste and texture; there was much left to do, but if the world could accept his work, the world could avert disaster. The annual monocultures, like wheat, that stripped the planet’s topsoil would be history. His perennial grains would feed billions and not have to be replanted again and again. He thrust his hand into one of the bins and let the light brown meal flow between his fingers.

  This conference of bread bakers next week was important. If the famous bakers would support his work, if they would bake bread with his flours, then the rest of the world would follow, he was sure of it. Even the guys from BIG BREAD. They had never paid any attention until now, never given him a cent for research. Now they would have to listen, if only for an hour or so.

  There were some loaves of bread resting on the top of the work space, dusty with flour. Walter took a loaf with him to toast for breakfast. He stepped out of the mill and walked toward the farmhouse with the modern experimental kitchen built onto its modest frame. He looked across the road at his neighbor busy on his John Deere tractor, tillers cutting deep plows in the earth. A gust of wind took part of that Kansas field up in the air. It became a cloud of soil flying toward Oklahoma.

  “What a waste,” Walter muttered, shaking his head.

  * * *

  General Irwin Mills, U.S. Army retired, straightened his tie in the mirror. He wore a crisp white shirt, heavy starch, and a stolid navy blue tie with a small pattern that resembled a wheat sheaf. It had been a Christmas gift from his staff last year. Even on days like today, when he would spend most of his time in the test kitchens, he dressed in formal business attire, suit and tie. The general could go on at length about how dress code affects performance. Needless to say, there were no “casual Fridays” at the Milling and Grain International Studies Laboratory in Manhattan, Kansas. The general ran a boar-bristle brush quickly through his military-length gray hair. Every follicle was now standing at attention. He gave himself a full military salute in the mirror. “Carry on,” he snapped at his own image, then wheeled and left the bathroom. No one had ever said that the general didn’t set the same high standards for his own performance that he demanded of others. Even morning ablutions were performed by the book.

  Before the general had taken over the research lab, an agronomist with a wife and family had run the place, living in a house on the other side of town. The general, however, had no family. His wife had died of cancer seven years before, two years before the general retired. They never had children. “Running around the world is no place for a child,” the general pronounced early in his marriage, and his wife had placidly agreed, already unable to argue with her husband. So now the general lived alone and had requested an apartment outfitted above the office wing of the laboratory. He could be at work in forty-eight seconds, give or take three seconds. This morning he got there in forty-seven.

  “How are you this morning, sir?” the chief test baker asked as the general marched into the spotless test kitchen. Although the baker had been working with the general almost twenty years, when General Mills was responsible for feeding every G.I. in the army, he had never called the general by his first name. He had never even considered it.

  The general slipped off his suit jacket just as he had slipped it on a few minutes ago. He replaced it with a white lab coat, a white baker’s cap, and then started putting on thin latex gloves. He resembled a surgeon getting ready for a morning of operations.

  “Eager to get started,” he said. “We have a bunch of idiot artisan bakers coming out here on Thursday. But the research and development team from BIG BREAD will be with them and some European bakers, even the largest millers
in Rome. We must put on the dog-and-pony show.” The general sounded irritated but resigned to the fact that occasionally outsiders would have to be tolerated. “We will be introducing our new genetically altered wheat clone. I want them to fall all over themselves to be the first to use this product.” The general eyed the loaves of bread lined up with precision on the work table. “What are these?”

  “I don’t know, sir. They were here when I arrived this morning. They must be from research and development number three.”

  “Well, we better give them a try. The crust wasn’t hard enough yesterday. I know these artisans love crust on their bread. We’ve got to provide all the silly razzle-dazzle they’re used to,” the general said as he sliced a slice from each of the loaves, slices of exactly the same thickness.

  The general’s assistant gave him a mini salute. “They won’t even know what hit ’em.”

  * * *

  Ernest Powell smiled as he went down the stairs. He took a big gulp of air. There it was. There was nothing better than the smell of fresh baked bread. This morning it reminded him of his grandmother, as it always did. Of course his mother made good bread, too. They were all, all three generations, Kansas wheat farmers with bread in their blood. But his dear departed grandmother’s bread was the best. Not even his own sweet Betsy’s bread could compare.

  Ernest saw three loaves of bread sitting on the kitchen counter. He wondered if Betsy had made those to take to the funeral yesterday. Ernest had to admit to himself it had been quite a while since he had tasted his wife’s bread, now that he was the family bread baker most of the time. But they certainly weren’t going to have day-old bread this morning.

  He went over to the machine sitting on the kitchen counter and removed the pail resting within. A new burst of fragrance hit his nose. Ernest tapped the bottom of the pail and a loaf of bread fell on the counter, golden and still warm. Just then the back door of the house opened and his wife stepped into the kitchen, so pretty in her print dress with her hair pinned neatly in a net, as was the style of all Mennonite women. She was carrying a basket full of eggs that Ernest guessed she had just gathered from the hen house.

  “What kind did you make for us this morning, Ernest my love,” she asked as she, too, took a deep breath.

  “Wheat berry,” Ernest said with pride. “There are cooked wheat berries in the bread.”

  His wife started cracking eggs in a glass mixing bowl. “Your grandmother would have words for us both. You for enjoying such women’s work as baking bread. Me for shirking one of my household duties.”

  Ernest put his arms around his wife and gave her a kiss on the top of her head as she worked. “All the great bakers of France are men, although that wouldn’t stop Granny from disapproving. And we’d get an even longer lecture for making our bread in a bread machine,” he laughed.

  “Not if she knew you won the national championship,” Betsy said with a laugh. “Now go wake the children, Mr. Grand Champion Bread Baker, I’m going to make baked eggs with lemon juice and powdered sugar this morning.”

  Ernest sat down at the kitchen table. “I’ll get them in a minute. First I want to run through the speech that I’m giving at the ARTOS meeting for you. The kids will tease me.”

  “So will those fancy bread makers. They don’t want people using that gadget that you’re so proud of.”

  Ernest stood up, a warrior defending his turf. “Why? Because it fills the house with the blessed smell of homemade bread? It’s a lot better than BIG BREAD, puffed full of air and god knows what additives. Besides, when someone gets interested in making bread in a bread machine, they get interested in bread, period. Haven’t I started making my own from scratch once in a while when I have time?”

  His wife laughed. “Don’t be so defensive. I love you and your new hobby. It is more like a crusade, though, isn’t it? Stand up tall and give your speech. Don’t forget to smile once in a while. No bread baker will be able to resist you if you smile. Hurry now, before the kids get down here. We all have chores to do.”

  Ernest looked at his wife with pain in his eyes. “When you said kids it made me think again about the Akers and their loss.” he said. “Children shouldn’t pass before their parents. I don’t think they will ever get over it.”

  “Benjamin was a wonderful young man. I just can’t understand it. If it weren’t Benjamin I’d think he’d been drinking or something worse. I guess we’ll never know what made him run in front of that train.”

  Ernest nodded his head seriously. “God works in mysterious ways.”

  * * *

  Patrick Sullivan gazed absentmindedly out his office window. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The area around 31st and Main in Kansas City had been targeted for a big urban renewal project. Almost 100 acres of houses and businesses had been razed and then, because of the usual petty bickering on the city council and a major tenant backing out, the project had bogged down. A startlingly bare stretch of land lay smack dab in the middle of Kansas City. Patrick’s employers, BIG BREAD, INC., had taken advantage of the confusion to pick up a square block close to the project and build a new research and development facility. It had cost them a third of what it would have to build the same project out in the suburbs, in Kansas. But it sat like a bunker in the desert right now. Acres of land stretched out behind the building, waiting. In front was Main Street, the major north-south artery that the name implied. As weird as it was to feel that way in the midst of a city, Patrick always felt alone when he looked out at this strip of Main Street in front of his office, despite the traffic passing by. There were no people on the streets.

  A transplant from St. Louis, Patrick had the typical condescending St. Louis view of Kansas City when he arrived, and nothing had changed. He turned away from the depressing scene and back to his visitor. “So, did you wait until now to spring this on me because you knew I’d hate it? I do, you know.”

  The woman in the red power suit laughed nervously. “Why do you think my boss sent me with the bad tidings, instead of coming himself? He knew you wouldn’t be thrilled. But we are the public relations department and this is necessary PR work. And it has been cleared all the way to the top.”

  Patrick sighed deeply. He arranged and rearranged the three loaves of bread that sat on top of his desk. He assumed they were something new the R and D team had left for him to try. “Why me?”

  “Because you’re the rising star of the research side of the company. These artisan bakers have given us nothing but grief since they started making waves in the bread world ten years ago. We are the enemy, and they’re coming right into our camp, having their annual meeting here in Kansas City. We’ve got to meet them head on. They’re sure to speak to the press and point to us as the bad guys, pumping bread full of air and chemicals. We need to show them we are doing research that will make our company more compatible with their stupid agenda. Plus you were a chef. You talk their lingo.”

  Patrick shifted uncomfortably. “Was a chef. Boy, you know how to hurt a guy. Which is exactly why I don’t want to participate in this circus. I’ll be the guy the crowds part for, the one they wear the garlic wreaths for.”

  “The one with the silver stake in your heart? Oh, please, you’re a big boy. So they hate you. Big deal. I bet the most successful of them, someone like that Acme Bakery guy in Berkeley, doesn’t make what you make now. And you’re young, with lots of years of promotions ahead. What do you care what they think?”

  Patrick saw a sliver of light, and he went for it. “My point exactly. We are the biggest bread manufacturer in the United States. What do we care what this group of zealots says about us? Why not just ignore them?”

  The red power suit got up and Patrick sensed he had lost the argument. She paused at the door. “Ever since the Twinkie defense became a courtroom joke, our board has been very thin-skinned about our image,” she said. “They want to buff it up and Patrick, you are the man of the hour to do that. Most people in this company would jump at the chance to take ou
r case to the celebrity bread makers. Make us look good.”

  Patrick smiled weakly as she closed the door. The thick folder of information and suggestions from PR was smack in the middle of his desk.

  “What am I doing here?” he asked himself out loud as he opened the file.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon in Düsseldorf. Dieter Bishop paced in the backroom of his bakery as his assistants packed the Styrofoam coolers. His bags sat by the door of the kitchen. He had insisted on waiting until the last possible moment to grind the flour he was taking with him to the United States. He wanted it as fresh as possible. So Dieter paced while one of his assistants ground away in the little milling room at the back of the bakery. Custom flour was one of the things that made Dieter famous.

  Paolo, his right hand man, was packing another cooler with the starter. Paolo had nursed this sourdough along for years now. It was like his child. “The Biga, she is ready for her trip,” the man murmured gently, looking lovingly at a plastic bag filled only a quarter with dough and surrounded by blue freezer packs.

  Dieter reacted to the other man’s tenderness. “Why do you insist on calling it that?” he snapped.

  Paolo shrugged and closed the lid, started taping it in place with strapping tape. “Because I’m Italian. That is what sour starter is called.”