Baker's Apprentice Read online

  His new apartment is on the fourth floor of one of Queen Anne’s ugliest buildings. Six stories of prison-green cinder block on Myrick Street, a couple of blocks off Queen Anne Avenue. I show up Saturday about noon in the pouring rain with a bag from Thriftway containing one beautiful, fat filet, two russet potatoes, a head of romaine, fresh tarragon, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, butter, and a loaf of pain de compagne from the bakery.

  “I’m not sure you’re ready for this,” he says when he opens the door.

  Motel 6 was perhaps a touch optimistic. The living room is beige and very small. Fortunately, there isn’t a lot of furniture, just an old wing-back chair, a desk, and a straight, wooden chair. A packing box next to the wing back serves as an occasional table, showcasing back issues of Outside magazine, legal pads, pens, and a collection of dirty glasses.

  He follows my gaze. “Try to think of it as minimalist design. What’s in the bag?”

  “Dinner.” He takes it from me and I follow him into the kitchen, a tiny galley with a two-burner stove, half refrigerator, and sink. The smell of bleach is overpowering.

  “Sorry,” he says, “but you should have smelled it before.”

  “Why don’t you open the window?”

  “It’s painted shut. Also, in case you tunneled in, it’s raining.”

  I wander back out through the living room and into the bedroom.

  The bed consists of a box spring on the floor, a mattress on top. Boxes are stacked three deep at the head and along one side next to the wall. The only other furniture is an empty bookcase and a small chest of drawers covered with stacks of spiral bound notebooks.

  I pick one up. “What are these?”

  He takes it out of my hand and puts it back on the stack. “Just stuff.”

  “Why don’t you let me read some of it?”

  “Because it’s really not that good.”

  “How about if I promise not to assign a letter grade?”

  “I’ve heard old English teachers never die. Besides, you’d never be able to decipher my scribbling.”

  “You’re talking to a woman who’s deciphered hundreds of sophomore essays.”

  “Wyn—” There’s an impatience in his voice I’ve never heard before. Then he softens. “Later, okay? I’ve got a few published articles, if you just can’t live without reading some of my deathless prose.”

  “I can live.”

  He reaches for my hand, but I turn away.

  “What’s in the boxes?” I squeeze between two precariously balanced towers.

  “Books.”

  I run my finger over one of the bookcase shelves. “We’d better dust this first. We can put all the fiction together in alphabetical order by author. Then we can arrange the nonfiction by categories. And the books could probably—”

  “I don’t need my books arranged. Has anyone ever suggested that you might be just the tiniest bit anal?”

  “It’s not a matter of being anal; it’s a matter of being able to find things.”

  “I’ve been finding everything for quite a number of years now, thanks. Besides…” He puts his hands on my shoulders, causing all those little fluttery things to start doing tricks in my stomach, and points south. Suddenly I forget that I’m annoyed. “I’ve got a much better idea. The place hasn’t even been christened yet.”

  “You mean you lured me over here with promises of unpacking books and fixing dinner, when all you really wanted…”

  He nuzzles my neck. “By God, Ms. Morrison. You’re far too clever for the likes of me.”

  As we’re slithering out of our jeans, the change from his pockets goes all over the floor, clanging and pinging and rolling away into corners, but I barely notice it because all my hearing and seeing sensors have been transformed, diverted to touch receptors and I seem to be composed entirely of skin. I don’t even hear myself saying his name, but afterward, I remember that I did.

  We spend the balance of the gray and quiet afternoon in his narrow bed. Making love, sleeping, listening to the soft staccato of rain against the window. Books tomorrow.

  Eventually hunger overcomes lust, and we reluctantly peel ourselves apart and out of the rumpled bed, then shower and dress. My hair takes forever to dry because he doesn’t have an industrial-strength dryer like mine. When I emerge from the bathroom, all damp and frizzy, he’s already rattling around in the kitchen.

  The toolbox has been excavated and the kitchen window pried open a crack. The rain has tapered off to a slow, rhythmic dripping. He even has a boom box, and when we stick the antenna against the windowpane, we can pick up KBLU, his favorite local station—“all rhythm, all blues, honey, all the time,” the DJ drawls.

  “You do have a frying pan?” I pull the lettuce and butter out of the fridge.

  He hands me an old, beautifully seasoned cast-iron skillet. “Direct from the gourmet department of the Salvation Army Thrift Shop.” He rummages in the cupboard. “Ah. Day-Glo red. My finest bottle. Also my only bottle.” He uncorks the wine and pours it into two coffee mugs and hands one to me. It’s actually not bad.

  “Remind me never to go camping with you. If this is how you live, I don’t think I want to know your idea of roughing it.”

  He pushes up his sleeves and chops the potatoes while I put a pot of water on to boil and wash the lettuce.

  On the radio a sandpaper voice backed by a twangy acoustic guitar asserts that “you can’t never tell what a woman’s got on her mind.” Mac pauses in his search for plates to turn up the volume. “Listen to this. That’s a real oldie. The twenties, I think. Maybe someone like—”

  “Blind Lemon Jefferson, my man,” the DJ interrupts. “By request for Franklin DuPree, who’s at work tonight down at Pier One. Listen up, Franklin, to the Lemon’s words of wisdom. Now go you and do likewise, my son.”

  I try to look suitably impressed by the music’s authenticity, while I slice the filet in two horizontally, sprinkle salt in the skillet, and set it over a high flame. It’s a small kitchen, but as I learned in France, size doesn’t matter.

  The summer after my sophomore year at UCLA, I did a work-study program at a bakery in Toulouse, and lived with the Guillaumes, the family who owned it. The first time I saw Madame Guillaume’s kitchen, I was astounded by what wasn’t in it. No food processor, no heavy-duty mixer, no electric coffee maker, no toaster, no microwave, no garbage disposal, no dishwasher. Just a big, black gas stove, some copper pots and pans, a few good knives, whisks and spoons, a rolling pin, huge ceramic mixing bowls, and not much more than that.

  I used to love watching her work. She didn’t own a cookbook; she cooked by tradition and instinct. The only recipes she had in written form were scratched in spidery penmanship on paper that was wrinkled and yellowed and as soft as cotton. They had been passed down from her grandmother to her mother and then to her, and she knew them by heart anyway. On Wednesday nights she always made steaks, and once I had them fixed this way, I never really liked charcoal-grilled meat again.

  When the pan is nearly smoking, I throw the steaks in, searing a salty crust onto both sides. Then I put them on a plate and deglaze the pan with balsamic vinegar, reducing it to a syrup. Mac smashes the potatoes with a giant fork while I add butter and pepper and chopped tarragon to the pan to finish the sauce. In just under twenty minutes, we’re sitting on the floor, using the packing box for a table.

  “This is incredible. Where’d you learn to do this?”

  “I got the idea in France. Except the sauce is my own shortcut. Madame Guillaume would just whip up real béarnaise.”

  He has this way of smiling with just his eyes. “It couldn’t be any better than this.”

  “Is your mother a good cook?”

  He’s refilling our coffee mugs with wine, and he doesn’t look up. “Not really. Suzanne was always domestically challenged.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. She’s an artist, right?”

  He just nods.

  “What’s she like?”

&nbs
p; “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? She’s your mother.”

  “We never got along.” He breaks his bread into three smaller pieces. Then he puts it down and looks at me. “She’s very…attractive. Talented. And strange.”

  “Strange in what way?”

  “She was never all there after—after my father died. I’ve never been close to her. Haven’t even talked to her in years.”

  I push my last piece of steak around in the cold sauce. “My relationship with my mother wasn’t so terrific either. For a long time. It’s funny, though. When you think about it. Mothers sort of take the rap for everything, don’t they? I mean, if they’re attentive and loving, they’re smothering. If they’re independent or undemonstrative, they’re cold.”

  “Sometimes both at once,” he says quietly. “Depends on where you are in the family hierarchy.”

  “Being an only child, I was the hierarchy. Where were you?”

  He lays his knife and fork carefully across the plate. “I wasn’t speaking from personal experience. Just general observation.” He gets up and carries our plates into the kitchen.

  three

  Shortly after I arrived in Toulouse, Jean-Marc Guillaume asked me why I had chosen a bakery for my work-study program. Nineteen years old and full of myself, I told him I was trying to decide if I wanted to be a bread baker.

  A smile illuminated his coal-dark eyes, and he rubbed the back of one floury hand along his stubbled jawline. Then he said, “Wynter.” Except he pronounced it Weentaire. “…you do not choose to bake bread, the bread chooses you.”

  Apparently the bread took a while to make up its mind about me. It kept quiet through my disappointing careers in real estate and teaching, and one disastrous marriage, but now, at last it has spoken. I can’t imagine doing anything else.

  That summer in France was a true awakening for me, but I didn’t appreciate exactly what it meant or how much I learned because I was distracted by other things—like hanging out with Jean-Marc’s sister, Sylvie, and her friends, plotting to lose my virginity, sleepwalking through the usual French language and culture classes that I was required to take at the university.

  At the time, I saw Jean-Marc as a fusty, hard-nosed—although undeniably sexy—taskmaster, obsessed with details, too narrowly focused on the minutiae of his craft. Now I find myself doing the same things I laughed at him for—shredding bread in restaurants to examine the crumb, pulling croissants apart to inspect the layers. At the health food store, I’ve gotten odd looks from people who passed by the bulk-foods aisle and noticed me running my hands through the wheatberries, and I’ve caught myself standing sometimes in the predawn stillness at the bakery, just standing and listening to the bread hiss and sing and pop as the hot crust contracts in the cold morning air.

  I’ve often thought that if I could go back now and do a real apprenticeship with Jean-Marc, how much more I could learn. Since that’s not possible—at least not in the foreseeable future—I try to experiment with different recipes and techniques at work, something that’s a hell of a lot easier since I bought out Diane’s share and became Linda’s boss instead of the other way around. I also read everything I can find on bread and baking, which is so much more than I ever imagined. Like A Brief History of European Breads, by Eleanor Heinz.

  The book is mostly a history, kind of dry and scholarly, but tucked in between chapters on the evolution of flour mills and the rise of community ovens were a couple of recipes that intrigued me. One of them, la fouace aux noix, or hearth bread with walnuts, intrigued me sufficiently that I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and so tonight, I arrive at work with the book tucked under my arm.

  Linda reacts predictably with a disgusted snort and a rolling of eyes. “Here we go again.”

  I smile and say loudly in my cheesiest announcer voice, “That’s right, Linda! It’s time for another episode of Adventures in Baking. With your host, Wynter Morrison.”

  La Fouace aux Noix

  1 envelope yeast

  1/3 cup lukewarm water

  4 cups unbleached white flour

  ½ cup whole wheat flour

  1 tablespoon salt

  1 cup lukewarm milk

  ¾ cup coarsely chopped walnuts

  ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

  Cornmeal, for dusting

  Dissolve the yeast in warm water. In a large bowl, mix the flours with the salt, make a well in the center, and add the yeast. Add the milk and stir well to make a spongy dough. Mix in the nuts and butter with a hard rubber spatula or your hands. The dough should be quite stiff. Cover with a damp towel and set in a draft-free area to rise for 2 hours. Punch down the dough and knead for 3 to 5 minutes, then form into a ball. Sprinkle a cookie sheet with cornmeal, place the loaf on it, and let rise 15 minutes, then turn the oven on to 425°F. When the oven is hot, slash a cross in the top of the loaf with a razorblade or very sharp knife. Put a pan of hot water on the lowest shelf of the oven, and the bread on the middle shelf. Bake for 30 minutes, then remove the water and turn the oven down to 300°F and bake for 30 minutes more.

  Rabelais once wrote, “There is nothing better than warm fouace with grapes and a fresh rosé or mellow Vouvray.”

  While the dough rises in its crockery bowl and Linda grumbles her way through whole wheat walnut bread, I weigh out the levain, the natural starter that I pulled from the rye chef (one of the mother starters that we always have going in the fridge) last night and pour boiling water over the raisins for our pumpernickel-raisin bread.

  “So what did the doctor say about your stress test?”

  “What?” She turns off the big Hobart mixer.

  “I said, what did the doctor say? When you had your stress test?”

  “He put me on a diet.” Her face grows suddenly puffy and pink, as if she might cry, and her voice takes on overtones of tragedy. “Said I couldn’t have Cheez-Its anymore.”

  I can’t meet her eyes because I know it’s serious to her and I’m afraid I’ll laugh.

  “Bad enough that I had to quit smokin’, and now this.” She turns the motor back on without waiting for my reply.

  God. Life without cigarettes and Cheez-Its. What’s left?

  Ellen comes in at five A.M. and throws her purse on one of the chairs, grabs the bottle of window cleaner, and attacks the display cases as if the food smears and fingerprints were left there as premeditated personal insults. Her face is a study in grim determination.

  I turn on the espresso machine and reach for two cups. “Why are you here so early?”

  She squats down to wipe the base of the counter, tucking her long, gauzy purple skirt under her butt. “Oh, it’s this Maggie/Tyler thing. They’re driving me crazy, and at this point it’s a very short drive.” She gives herself a boost back to standing and inclines her head toward the oven. “I thought we should talk about it. Is everything under control back there?”

  I stick my head around the corner of the ovens.

  “I need to talk to Ellen for a minute,” I say. “Are you okay?”

  Linda turns from loading bowls and utensils into a sinkful of hot water to give me a look that would fry an onion, as my oma used to say. “Used to do it all myself, just in case you forgot,” she snaps. “A course I’m okay.”

  I grab the loaf of fouace from the cooling rack and beat a strategic retreat.

  Ellen runs the espresso into latte cups and tops them off with coffee.

  “Is it that bad?” I tear an end off the bread and hand it to her.

  Her eyes brighten slightly. “What’s this? Something new?”

  “La fouace aux noix. Hearth bread with walnuts.”

  She takes a delicate bite. “Mmm. Good stuff.” Then a not-so-delicate bite. Then she looks at me suspiciously. “How much butter is in this?”

  “Not too much.” I smile. “A quarter of a pound.”

  She shakes her head, but doesn’t refuse a second piece.

  We sit a
t one of the flea-market tables and eat in silence for a minute. She takes a long, slow sip of her depth charge. “Ooh, that’s better.” She sits up a little straighter in the chair.

  “So what’s happening on the day shift?” I lean back and prop my right foot up on my left knee.

  “Tyler’s decided she should’ve been hired as the ‘cake designer.’ She even came up with a slogan. ‘On your special day, shouldn’t your cake be cutting edge?’”

  “What? She hated doing them. All she did was bitch and moan.”

  “That was before we brought in somebody else and started paying them more money. Also, Maggie has artistic pretensions, and so Tyler suddenly remembers that she’s supposed to be the artist around here. Between her snide comments about Maggie’s work, and Maggie’s lecturing her about the difference between European fondant and rolled fondant, Swiss buttercream and Italian—close your eyes and imagine how that goes over. Also, I can’t count the number of times we’ve now heard that at Booker’s, the cake people never had to do cleanup, so she can’t understand why she’s expected to pick up trash in the café, bus tables, or any of that stuff…” Ellen gives me a pleading look. “It’s all incredibly petty stuff, but it starts when Maggie comes in and it goes on all damn day, till Tyler leaves. I think I’ll lose my mind. Or kill both of them, whichever comes first. The worst part is, it seems to be contagious. Now Jen’s mad at Tyler because she feels sorry for Maggie, and Misha doesn’t like Maggie because she thinks Tyler should have been offered the job, and on and on…”