Stones for Bread (34 page)

Wild White Sandwich Bread

Makes two loaves

L
IESL
’
S NOTES
:

This wild yeast loaf is soft and airy without the use of commercial yeast. The taste is mild with only a hint of sourness. Translation: even the kids will love it. Because butter and milk powder are added, this bread would be considered enriched, which is why the crumb is so tender.

The windowpane test is used by bakers to gauge gluten development. Take some dough from the larger mass, approximately golf-ball sized or a little smaller. Stretch the dough. If it doesn’t tear but the windowpane (thin dough membrane) is mostly opaque, there is only a low level of gluten development. If the dough stretches to a thin, translucent windowpane, the gluten is highly developed. This recipe calls for the gluten to be developed somewhere between these two extremes; the membrane will be opaque in places and translucent in others, but the recipe works best when there are more translucent areas than not.

Please remember, the “standard kitchen measurements” are close approximations. For best results, use a kitchen scale.

I
NGREDIENTS
:

700 grams (5¾ cups) unbleached white flour, organic if possible

355 grams (1½ cups) water

18 grams (1 tablespoon) finely ground sea salt

65 grams (4½ tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

42 grams (2 tablespoons) honey

23 grams (⅓ cup) instant non-fat dry milk

400 grams (2 cups) 100% hydration sourdough starter (see
page 45
)

E
QUIPMENT
:

kitchen scale (optional but recommended)

stand mixer with dough hook

wooden spoon

olive oil

plastic wrap

butter (for greasing pans)

two 8½ x 4½-inch bread pans

baking stone

broiler pan

D
O
A
HEAD

Make sure the starter has been fed and is ready to use for baking.

O
N
B
AKING
D
AY

Combine all the ingredients in the bowl of the stand mixer. Using the dough hook, mix on low speed until the dough forms a ball of medium dough consistency—a little more water or flour may be needed. Increase speed to medium and mix for approximately 8 minutes, until the gluten has developed sufficiently, as described in the notes above.

Lightly coat a large glass or ceramic mixing bowl with olive oil and move the dough into this bowl. Cover with plastic wrap or a clean kitchen towel. After 1 hour, turn the dough
out onto a lightly floured surface and “stretch and fold” four times. Return it to the bowl and cover for another hour, and then “stretch and fold” a second time. Again, return to the bowl and allow to rest for 1 more hour (this is a total of 3 hours of fermentation time). Gently divide the dough in half and shape each into a log. Allow the dough to rest on a floured surface, covered, for 30 minutes.

Generously grease the loaf pans and, after reshaping the dough to fit, place it into the pans seam side down. Cover and let the dough proof for approximately 3 hours, or until the dough has risen at least ½ inch above the pan.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit with an empty broiler pan on the bottom rack. Place the loaves in the oven and add 1 cup of water to the broiler pan. Close the oven door quickly and reduce heat to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake for 45 minutes, checking at 20 minutes to see if the loaves are browning too quickly; if so, cover loosely with aluminum foil. (If you don’t tent the tops with foil at 20 minutes, you’ll want to continue to check every five minutes to make sure the loaves aren’t getting too brown. To simplify this process, you can cover the loaves with foil at 20 minutes even if they’re not dark enough for your liking, and then remove the foil the last 5 minutes of baking to brown them more.)

Remove the loaves from the oven and carefully take them out of their pans. Cool for at least 1 hour before slicing; allowing to cool to room temperature works best if the bread will be sliced thin for sandwiches.

I leave the bakehouse around noon, telling Gretchen I have errands, and go see Seamus. I can wait for the next morning, at church, but don’t want to try to find a way to get him alone and have a serious conversation. The
words rattle around my head, each imaginary conversation I have with him longer and more heartfelt than the previous, and I’m afraid, given too much passing time, these words will decompose and be reabsorbed into myself, and I’ll have nothing left to say at all.

I bring bread, white loaf bread, because I know he likes it best, a new formula I’ve decided has been perfected, made with sourdough but also ideal for sandwiches. When I knock on the door of his house and he answers, I hold the two paper sacks out to him and say, “I’ve come bearing gifts.”

“It’s Saturday,” he says. I think he’s been napping, his hair matted flat on one side of his head, the top slightly greasy and standing on end.

“Playing hooky,” I say. “Someone I know told me it would be good for me.”

He briskly buffs his face in his hands, fights a yawn. “Oh.”

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure. Sorry.” He moves out of the way.

“Thanks.” I set the bread on the table. “Is Cecelia here?”

“At a friend’s. Which is why I was catching up on a little rest.”

“I didn’t mean to wake you. I can go—”

“No,” he says. “I’m up. Really.”

This is not how I pictured things going, him half-asleep in baggy sweatpants, his stomach speaking in short, audible growls, me foolishly waiting on his porch, grinning with all the enthusiasm of a Crest Whitestrips commercial. Seamus turns on the tap and drinks a glass of water. “Are you hungry? I can make us lunch.”

I dangle one of the bread bags in front of him. “Sandwiches?”

“I’m always up for one.”

He unloads his icebox, all the cold cuts, spreads, condiments, and anything he deems sandwich worthy—a chunk of London broil, egg salad, cold French fries—lined up on the kitchen table. “Thick or thin?” he asks, a steak knife positioned over the bread.

“Thin,” I say, and he cuts two slices for me. I dress mine with
turkey breast and provolone, lettuce, tomato, and Dijon mustard, while he hacks off a two-inch-thick piece of his own, smears it with cream cheese, and then tops it with coleslaw.

My poor bread.

We make small talk. Our interactions feel clunky today, strained even, as if we’re both trying too hard to be casual. I can’t read him, and I see none of what I’m looking for—that is, interest from him, in me—to give me that last push into saying what I came to tell him. I’ll do it anyway.

I’m terrified.

“So, I have news,” I begin, and Seamus pauses, mid-bite, and returns his sandwich to his plate. “About the show. I’m not going to do it.”

His entire face wrinkles. “What?”

“I’ve turned it down.”

“Why?”

It’s not the response I expect. Crowing, quacking, shouting, “Yaba daba do” as loud as possible—those are Seamus reactions. Defensiveness prickles in my armpits, at my hairline. “I have reasons. I don’t want to abandon the bakehouse, for one. I know the network says I’d only be away twelve weeks maximum for filming, but there’s some clauses about special appearances and other obligations, and I don’t want to be roped into something I don’t want to do.”

“Oh.”

I turn my head, unable to look at him as the next words leave my mouth. “And there’s you and Cecelia to consider.” Seamus doesn’t answer. I wait, every skin follicle responding to the embarrassed silence, tightening with anxiety and perspiration. “Well then. I guess I’ll be going now—”

“Liesl.”

“What?”

“You can’t say something like that with your back toward me.”

I don’t move. He stands and rotates my chair. My feet tangle in
the legs, ankles kinking, one heel twisting out of my shoe. Sitting again, he leans in close enough for me to see his eyes aren’t completely gray but centrally heterochromic; a ring of amber glows around his iris. And he grins so brightly, so contagiously, that I smile as well. “Tell me again.”

“I don’t want to leave you. Or Cecelia.”

He catches my face between his hands and, rising slightly, kisses me at the intersection of my nose and forehead, where I pluck my eyebrows to keep them from meeting. “I love you,” he says.

“I think I might love you too.”

Nineteen

We eat at Pane Pappa, a bakery chain close to campus and open until eleven. My roommates rave over the desserts, which are dry enough to be Sheetrock, and the bread. I don’t give my opinion of the gummy, flavorless loaves, instead ordering tea and lentil soup—without the roll.

It’s a celebration tonight. We graduate in two weeks. Mia’s boyfriend proposed the other night; she wears a pavé ring of grayish diamonds all clustered in a pear shape and tells us Bradley promises to give her something more significant as soon as he’s working. Cassandra has been accepted into the competitive master’s program she wanted. And I already have a job with a technology consulting firm in New York City, as an entry-level software developer. We reminisce over the past four years—three foolish freshmen thrown together by random computer generation, kept together by the bonds of individuality. That’s why we’re still friends. There’s never been competition between us. Different majors, different goals. I don’t think we’ve shared a class since first semester. We pledge to keep in touch, but I’m not certain we will. Maybe the other two, but I’m Teflon when it comes to relationships.

We’re the only people remaining in the restaurant. A blackhead-speckled teenager mops the tile floor, and an older woman gathers all the leftover loaves of bread and drops them in large, clear plastic garbage bags. She fills three of them.

What waste
, Mia says, shaking her head.

The teenager, hearing her, says,
They’re not going to the dumpster. Some church picks them up and does something with them. Gives it to poor people, I guess
.

What church?
I ask.

He snorts.
How should I know?

On the way out, the woman at the counter tells me the church’s location and food distribution times. I thank her and, after we leave, watch through the glass door as she berates the boy for being rude to customers.

The next morning I skip my information systems security class and walk four blocks to an asbestos-shingled house that’s been annexed for a church building. Inside, I follow a paneled hallway to a back room. Several long folding tables stacked with clear garbage bags greet me. An elderly lady asks if I’ve been here before. I shake my head and she hands me two balled plastic sacks.
You can take as much as you can fit in these
.

I move between the tables, glancing into the bags. Some are filled with a variety of unwrapped loaves, the ones from places like Pane Pappa. Others contain bread in cellophane or paper bags from the bakery of the local grocery store or the Walmart. There’s a bag with wilted vegetables and fruits, one with muffins and stale bagels, and another of donuts, all squished and disfigured, the jelly fillings bleeding over the fudge icing, the custard smeared around the inside of the plastic.

A half dozen people, all women, paw through the bags with their bare hands, and a preschooler sits beneath one of the tables, devouring the donuts he’s plucked from the heap above him.

Are you doing okay?
a cheerful, obese woman asks. Her wooly, pale
hair frizzes in two springy clips on either side of her head. She looks more poodle than human.
You seem a little lost
.

I think I’d like to help
. The words spill out even while my mind protests. I’ll be gone in a month and what will it matter then?

The woman’s face swells with a jack-o-lantern grin.
Wonderful. Praise God. Let me get your name. We need people to be here on Tuesday and Friday mornings, and always to pick up the food. Do you have a car? We’re always—

I’d like to organize the bread
.

Her smile collapses, slowly, like unrelaxed dough pulling back in on itself when someone tries stretching it.
I don’t understand
.

It’s all thrown together. I’d like to separate it into its different kinds and tell the people who come what they’re eating. Perhaps even package it into—

Darling, no one getting stuff here cares about any of that
.
Bread is bread is bread. As long as it doesn’t break their teeth when they chew it, they’re happy
.

Sometimes if you know better, you care better
. That sentence belongs to my mother, and it’s odd for my tongue to wear her words; it’s like speaking with a mouthful of pebbles, and perhaps the woman hears it that way. By the way she looks at me, she thinks I’m some wealthy, out-of-touch college student whose parents give me carte blanche on the credit card and who doesn’t understand poverty in the slightest. My mother, though, knew poverty. She came with Oma and they had nothing but a steamer trunk and two baskets of belongings. Oma scrubbed floors and took in laundry. My mother plucked chicken feathers for the butcher in their apartment building and earned a nickel a bird. But still they ate good bread, and gave it to others so they, too, might taste the stars. So when I came home from school at nine years old, complaining that all my friends ate white bread with fluff and chocolate puddings in plastic containers, my mother explained to me that good things, things prepared with delight by
someone who knows they are good things, can bring hope to those who otherwise may never experience it.