Stones for Bread (26 page)

Three weeks pass since
Bake-Off
aired, and while business has lessened somewhat since those first few days, we’re still overwhelmed.
Xavier suggests calling a meeting, so I do. He comes back to the bakehouse after it closes—Jude home, asleep—and we sit, with Gretchen and Rebekah and Tee, to discuss some sort of workable plan.

I have no idea where to begin.

Gretchen, ever organized with her lists, reads off her first idea. She thinks the menu should be expanded.

“There is nothing wrong with my food,” Tee snaps. She wears a scarf over her thinning hair, knotted at the back of her neck, long, bright tails of silk hanging to her waist.

“Your food is delicious. We all know it. But we need more of it.”

“This is a bakehouse,” I say, “not a restaurant.”

“Yes, but different people are coming now. People from out of town. They come hungry. If you don’t have something for them here, they’ll go somewhere else to eat. It’s money lost.”

I shake my head. “It’s too much for one person.”

“We hire someone else, then.”

I wait for the explosion, but Tee says simply, “Yes.”

“What?” I say.

“You get me little helper cook. I teach them. They make what I say. All is happy-happy.”

“Are you sure?”

Tee shrugs. “It is good.”

Like a schoolgirl, Rebekah holds her hand up. “I could help Tee?”

“You mean, instead of waitressing?” I ask.

Rebekah nods. “I love to cook. I help my mother all the time, and I make supper for all of us at least twice a week. And we cook seasonally, like you do, because of the farm. I imagine I know more ways to use acorn squash than most.”

I look at Tee. She jerks her head, once, a gavel descending. “I take the tall girl helper cook.”

Gretchen makes a note. “All right, then. I’ll get an ad in the papers
for someone else to do the counter and tables. Unless you want to take care of it, Liesl.”

“No. Please, just do it. What’s next?”

“A baker,” Xavier says.

“Zave.”

“We need someone else, my dear. That’s all there is to it.”

“We do,” Rebekah says. “We’re selling out almost every day. There’s nothing left to give away.”

“We only donate because it’s there,” Gretchen says. “If it’s all sold, that’s even better.”

“No. There needs to be bread for the ministry every day,” I say. “Rebekah, pull and bag twenty loaves each morning when you come in. Mix it up, maybe two of each kind, or three of some, if there are more than others. Just use your discretion. If we have more at the end of the afternoon, we’ll add it in.”

“That’s, like, five hundred dollars a week,” Gretchen says.

“It’s also what I want to do.”

Tee slaps the tabletop. “She boss.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“What’s next?”

Gretchen looks at her list again. “We need a—”

“—baker,” Xavier interrupts. I roll my eyes and groan, but he continues, “Listen to me, Liesl. It’s long overdue. You’re running yourself into the ground trying to take up the slack. What time do you get out of here at night? Nine? Ten, now? And then you’re back in the morning at five? You need to let some of it go.

“I know you have at least a dozen résumés, because I’ve read that many e-mails asking if the position is filled. Quite honestly, I don’t want to deal with it. You need an office manager as well, since you avoid your messages like the plague.”

“I can’t afford to hire all these people.”

“You hire the baker. Then Gretchen doesn’t have to do dough
anymore. She can take care of mail, inquiries that come through the website, whatever phone calls you don’t want to return, all of it, in the afternoons after the lunch rush and once the bakehouse closes.”

I exchange looks with both of them. “You’ve already figured it all out.”

Gretchen laughs. “Someone had to.”

“Of course,” Xavier says, winking at the waitress, “Gretchen will have increased responsibility now.”

“Fine, you’ll get a raise too.” I pluck the skin of my eyelids, making a wet, suction sound. “The first of your new duties is to schedule baker interviews. No more than two in an afternoon, though. Okay?”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Gretchen salutes.

“Lovely. Anything else?”

“How much more can you handle before your brain implodes?”

“Not much. Go easy on me.”

“Well, we should talk about mail order.”

I think I’ve dissociated for a fraction of a second. Everything fuzzes over and goes grayscale, bad reception from pupil to optic nerve. I blink, as if clearing my vision will affect my ears. “You didn’t just say what I think you did.”

“People are asking.”

“What people?”

Gretchen hops up in a chair and a blue folder appears; she’s been sitting on it. She waves several sheets of paper at me and then flips through them. “Alabama, Florida, Montreal, New York—”

“If they’re from New York they can just drive here.”

“—Nevada, Ohio, need I go on?”

“I can’t ship bread. The whole reason to buy it here is to get it fresh.”

“You could have limited items for shipping. Like stollen at the holidays. You always say it tastes better a few days after it’s baked. Or maybe just charge people for overnight delivery. If they want the bread, they’ll pay it.”

“Poilâne does mail order,” Xavier adds.

I give him a look that says,
Don’t even go there
. “I can’t think about this now. Gretchen, find out what other bakeries do and we’ll talk about it in a few days. Otherwise, unless someone is about to tell me there’s a huge meteor about to crash into the earth and destroy all life as we know it, I think we’re done here.”

Everyone scatters—Tee to finish her soup, Gretchen to monitor the inbox, Rebekah around the corner to the public library. “My mom’s picking me up there,” she says, but I wonder if she doesn’t want to be around here longer than necessary with me in such an irritable mood. She’s traded T-shirts for sweaters and her flip-flops for leggings and clogs beneath her skirt, but there’s a chill in the air so I ask, “Xavier’s leaving now. Do you want him to give you a ride over? It’s a bit cool.”

“I milk cows at four in the morning in December,” she says with a laugh and a wave as she pulls open the door. “This is nothing.”

Xavier, however, hasn’t budged from his chair. “You are leaving now, right?” I say.

“Liesl, sit.”

“What’s going on?”

More softly. “Sit.”

I do. “Oh-kaaaay.” When he says nothing, I shrug my entire body and face forward, urging some sort of communication from him. “Well?”

“Mail-order requests aren’t the only inquiries you’re getting.”

“What else do people want? My firstborn?”

“Your business.”

“I’m sorry. What?”

“You’ve had three offers to buy your business. Or at least to discuss the possibility of some sort of merger.” He coughs. “One was from my very own flesh and blood.”

“You mean your son? Jude’s father? What’s his name, Bill?”

“That’s the one.”

“I don’t get it. Why?”

“It’s business, my dear. You’re a phenomenon right now.”

“I’m small potatoes.”

“Ah, yes. But therein lies the rub. You don’t have to be. With the right marketing, the right capital, Wild Rise can go national easily.”

“I have absolutely no desire for that. My goodness, Zave, that’s like my worst nightmare.”

“Bill doesn’t know that. Neither do these other two companies. All they know is they want to be the ones to snatch you up and reap the rewards before you figure out how to do it for yourself, or someone else clues you into the fact.”

“They know you’re working for me. All of them.”

“I’m sure they do.”

I take in as much air as my lungs will hold, don’t let it out until the world begins to tremble and darken around me. I lean my head back as far as it will go and my vertebrae crackle and I stare into the eggplant pipes above me. “Patrice Olsen said my life wouldn’t change.” My bent throat distorts my voice.

“She’s not God.”

I’ve never heard Xavier utter anything remotely religious, not that some generic phrase indicated a kind of faith. But it gives me pause, and I lift my head back onto my shoulders. It’s not how he looks, spine-rod straight as always, burnished skin from his daily three-mile runs, one blue eye frosted with a developing cataract. He’s healthier than I am, probably. But he radiates mortality today, as if he’s been considering the inevitable, whether three years into the future, or thirty.

If I had a bit of Cecelia’s missionary zeal, I might say something. Coming from a child, unwelcome personal insinuations—
What? You don’t go to church? You need to!
—are forgivable and somewhat endearing. From the mouth of a grown woman with her own questionable commitment to all things Jesus, it’s on the spectrum between laughable and offensive. Xavier will respond with a polite
Thanks, but
no thanks
, forget I mentioned it, and our relationship will be undisturbed. I’ll know I said something, though, the conversation more an indictment of me than him. I am the other son in the parable, the one who tells his father, “I will go,” but doesn’t.

Xavier peers into me now. “What?”

“Nothing. Just tired.”

“I meant what I said before, Liesl. Enough is enough. You don’t need to come in so early. Jude and I can take care of the first morning bakes. Sleep in. Go home at a decent hour and relax. And let that young man of yours dote on you more. It keeps us feeling useful.” He winks.

I open my mouth to protest, but it’s Xavier, and worthless, so I mumble, “He’s not my young man.”

“Oh, my dear. He’s been yours since the first day he saw you, I’m certain of that. Him and the girl, both, if you’ll have them.” He reaches across the table and takes my hands in his. “There’s nothing worse than waking up one day and realizing you’re old and alone, and bound to stay that way.”

I want to tell him he’s not old, and neither of us is alone, but it’s semantics, arguing for argument’s sake, because I know exactly what he means. So I nod. He gives my fingers a squeeze and a shake, and then stands. “I think that’s all the lecturing I have in me today.”

“Wait,” I say. “What about Bill? And the others?”

“Decline their offers. Politely, of course. It won’t be the end of it, though. You’ll get more.”

I wrinkle my nose, puff my lips, and blow air through them until they buzz. “It’s easy to say no to something you don’t want. Anyway, I have an office manager to do that for me now.”

Xavier’s smile flickers on and off in an instant. “If I were only more like you twenty, thirty, forty years ago. I wasn’t satisfied with small and perfect. I wish to God I had been. Then maybe I would be still baking, with my sons, in one small shop. Like this one. Instead of cringing each time I see some mass-produced Potter’s loaf on the shelf
in the Qwik-Mart. It was purely ego. I enjoyed too much the power I had to make something grow.”

“I have just as much ego as you, Zave.”

“You have passion. That’s a whole different beast.” He slips a tan corduroy newsboy hat on his bald head. “I suppose I should be thankful, though, if that’s one of only two regrets I have in life.”

“What’s the other?”

“That I didn’t tell my Annie I loved her every single hour of every single day.”

“Stick to Your Buns” Sticky Buns

Makes 8 buns

L
IESL
’
S NOTES
:

This sticky bun recipe uses brioche dough, a highly enriched French bread that is more like cake. The phrase “Let them eat cake”—often attributed to Marie Antoinette but one she most likely never uttered—is a translation of the French
“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,”
that is, not cake as we think of it, but a rich bread full of butter, milk, and egg.

This recipe requires the dough be chilled in the refrigerator overnight.

If sticky buns aren’t a favorite, try the variation for cinnamon rolls at the end of the recipe.

I
NGREDIENTS

F
OR THE
S
PONGE
:

5 grams (1 teaspoon) sugar

6 grams (¼ cup) warm milk, whole if possible

8 grams (2½ teaspoons) instant yeast

60 grams (½ cup) all-purpose flour, sifted

F
OR THE
D
OUGH
:

1.5 grams (¼ teaspoon) salt

40 grams (3 tablespoons) sugar

15 grams (1 tablespoon) warm (room temperature is fine), milk, whole if possible

3 large eggs

180 grams (1½ cups) all-purpose flour, organic, if possible

170 grams (1½ sticks or ¾ cup unsalted butter, room temperature and cut into ½-inch slices

F
OR THE
G
LAZE
:

226 grams (2 sticks or 1 cup) unsalted butter

440 grams (2 cups) firmly packed light brown sugar

110 grams (⅓ cup) honey

120 grams (½ cup) water

1.5 grams (¼ teaspoon) finely ground sea salt

100 grams (1 cup) pecan halves (optional)

F
OR THE
F
ILLING
:

55 grams (¼ cup) light brown sugar

50 grams (¼ cup) granulated sugar

57 grams (¼ cup) unsalted butter, melted

6 grams (1½ teaspoons) ground cinnamon

60 grams (½ cup) pecan halves, toasted (optional)

E
QUIPMENT
:

small bowls

plastic wrap

stand mixer with dough hook and whisk attachment

large glass bowl

saucepan

whisk

bench scraper or chef’s knife 9 x 13-inch baking dish

D
O
A
HEAD

To make the sponge, stir together sugar and milk in a small bowl. Sprinkle yeast over mixture and let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes. Stir flour into yeast mixture, forming a soft dough, and cut a deep X across top. Let the sponge rise, covered with plastic wrap, at room temperature for 1 hour.

To make the dough, combine salt, sugar, and hot milk in a small bowl and stir until salt and sugar are dissolved. Fit mixer with whisk attachment, then beat 2 eggs at medium-low speed until fluffy. Add sugar mixture and combine well. Add in order, beating after each addition: 60 grams (½ cup) flour, remaining egg, 60 grams (½ cup) flour, ¼ of the butter, and remaining 60 grams (½ cup) flour. Beat mixture for 1 minute.