Lately I find myself traveling in new circles.
I mean, people are always going in circles, aren’t they?
Don’t get me wrong, though: this is not a rant — nor is it my intention to write a blog post dedicated to trite clichés about the human condition — this is about bread and baking and about the last several weeks of my own journey…
The first four weeks of the Small Bites baking company.
The thing about circles is they don’t have to be a rut: some loops satisfy reliably, repetitively, like a favorite walk, a beloved book reread, or another filling, and fulfilling, iteration of a proven recipe.
Some loops prove their value through the very act of return, the way a sweater grows incrementally from the endless circles within circles of a crochet hook in clever hands, or the way a sourdough starter gets better, stronger and more flavorful when used with regularity.
Great bread is not produced by chance, or inspiration; it is not a spur-of-the-moment sort of thing. Bread requires planning, preparation, the careful application of ancient techniques — often at the expense of sleep. One does not become a baker because they are prone to waking up before 4 a.m.; one learns to wake up, and get to work, before dawn, when normal humans are still abed, because they have become a baker.
The first time it happened to me — becoming a baker, I mean — I was in my early twenties. Already far enough into my career as a foot soldier in the trenches of the local restaurant scene to be feeling more than a little jaded at the prospects, or lack thereof, presented by a string of future jobs that — if past performance was any predictor — seemed likely to lean heavily into dish pits, sandwich stations, brunch shifts and other forms of persistent personal torture.
At a relative’s suggestion I answered a classified ad looking for help at a local mid-sized bakery supplying several cafés of its own, plus a handful of wholesale accounts. I had zero hands-on-bread time going into the interview, but the owner must have seen something in me because he let me into the club; I got a well-worn apron, a bench knife, some interesting new friends and an introduction to a world that would soon consume me entirely, like a healthy culture consumes the slurry of flour and water it is fed three or four times a day.
I became deeply invested in bread; those unfortunate enough to be in my circle at that time can attest that I would not shut up about bread. Bread bread bread. Maybe you know someone… Do try to be gentle; we are harmless, after all, pie-eyed acolytes of the cult of culture, and we just… we just want to talk to you about sourdough some more…
I read all the books, I threw all sorts of things into the big spiral-arm mixers that were just a small sample of the many wonderful industrial-sized toys that I got to play with at my new job, I pulled thousands of loaves out of several marvelously huge ovens — it was hard work, but it was deeply satisfying in a way that I had not encountered before in a j-o-b — a true indicator of a thread that has wound its way through the story of both my professional and private life in the decades since: I have been all sorts of things, done all kinds of jobs, but I have always been a baker.
Today I find myself looking back at four full weeks of the latest chapter in that story, the first four weeks of our newborn business: a micro-bakery operating under a cottage license out of our own kitchen, only slightly modified to accommodate the very real demands of our six-day-a-week production schedule.
It is a Monday, and so I did not start this day as I do all of the other ones, stumbling out of bed well before dawn to blearily bake the first of four or five rounds of breads, like that mustachioed legend of TV lore: “Time to make the… bialys!”
Ha.
Betty has had her first big feeding of the day, a sizable slurry slowly bubbling in a covered bowl on the bench. A smaller amount of freshly fed starter left in her large, covered glass jar to start the next stitch in the row.
Soon I will head over to the Golden Harvest to pick up any of yesterday’s product that might still be left. Rather than sell day-old breads or risk anyone having a less-than-best experience of our offerings, I have been bringing anything we didn’t sell to the community fridge at the Kittery Community Center, where I believe it finds its way to people who need it. I cannot bear throwing away food and would have a very hard time continuing to do business if food waste were part of the model.
Then, this afternoon, big-Betty-in-the-bowl gets built up further still, the remaining ingredients incorporated, not at all gently, by hand in a wrestling match between baker, bench and bowl, the resulting dough coddled and covered between occasional rounds of further smacking around until tray upon tray of smooth little lumps are finally stacked in the fridge awaiting final fillings and the next morning’s bake. The Betty-that-will-be, meanwhile, gets another feeding at the end of the day, ensuring that what is in the covered jar waiting for me the next morning will be a proper preferment, the foundation of another day’s dough.
The morning is the most tightly packed and busiest-feeling part of our day: several rounds of bialys, nahlys and larger loaves get baked and cooled, labels have to be printed and cut to size, all items packaged and labeled according to code and the result delivered to the market and on the shelves before they open. That is the goal, anyway; some days — like yesterday, with its overnight power failure — we get there a bit late.
Fresh bread delivered, we gather what is left from the previous day’s offerings and bring them to the community fridge before returning home to pour Betty from her jar and into the bowl where the next stitch in the chain gets its start.
I am a little tired, it’s true. All jokes aside, I sympathize completely with old Fred and his demanding — and not very restful — doughnut schedule.
But I think I can tell you why Fred lurched out of bed at an unfortunate hour, over and over, morning after morning, in an exhausted and seemingly endless loop.
Done right, with respectful attention to detail and all the stops along the way that anchor us to generation upon generation of bakers who have come before us, this is a craft that offers a path to enough-ness. I see in our beginnings here at Small Bites a real chance at a satisfying career, an ethical and useful occupation.
It is a good loop, each day a solid link in a carefully crafted chain, each bleary-eyed morning the beginning of the next stitch…
If we keep at this long enough, who knows what we might make?
