The Careless Cook VII

Sometimes I can measure the degree of my anxiety by the number of home-baked breads I have stored in my freezer. This past week proved to most difficult: six baguettes, and what King Arthur Flour refers to as Bag-of-the Bag Oatmeal loaf bread baked and frozen. In the freezer already were baked hamburger rolls (for veggie burgers) and two Italian loaves. And Passover approaches! Two of the baguettes are always dedicated to Amelia and Lilian, the ladies who every two weeks clean my apartment. At the onset of the pandemic, I had stopped their service but I continued to pay them. Every other Monday Amelia would arrive masked to the entrance way to the building, and I would head down masked and gloved to meet her and hand her a check for her usually fee. On one of the first mornings of this arrangement she sighed sadly that many of her clients were canceling her services and she was unable to sleep from worry. I commiserated with her but what could I do? But I decided that I would add to her salary loaves of my home-baked bread. In the beginning the delivery was whole pan-baked loaves. At this distance I recognize what a very, very small gesture this most certainly was, but I really didn’t know what else to do to relieve her worries! And when she and Lilian returned to clean my space again—again, fully masked—I raised their payment and continued to offer them the bread. I continue to bake baguettes for them. And then serendipitously our condominium was looking for someone to clean the public spaces and we hired Amelia and Lilian.
            As for the other loaves . . . well, the baguettes not dedicated to Amelia and Lilian I can eventually consume . . . but dealing with my anxieties is not as easy, and I recognize that a return to the bread-baking will certainly occur. But Passover approaches and I wonder what I will do with my anxieties during those eight days.

            I wonder what the relationship might be between the rise of my anxiety and the rising of the dough. I feel somehow accomplished when I peer into the bowl and the dough has doubled or even tripled in bulk. Perhaps in part the bread preparation is effort without thinking. I am a careless cook and so though I follow a recipe I do not do so precisely. I am careless. King Arthur tells me to measure my flour by weight . . . but that only dirties another dish I will have to wash and the few times I attempted to follow their advice I did not like the quality of the dough. Mea culpa, I am certain I did something incorrectly. And so as I have always done I take the cup measure and dip it into the flour container and sometimes scrape the top level and sometimes don’t bother to do so. I forget to add the salt and I I carelessly follow the recipe though I have been baking for thirty years, albeit somewhat carelessly. Perhaps the carelessness reflects my anxiety, (a topic I’ll not pursue here) but I feel calmer as the bread forms and when it does so my anxiety recedes. Sometimes, however, the effort only increases the anxiety and as I fret, I tell Alexa to raise the volume on the music. This helps. Sometimes the recipe calls the bread to be baked in a 9x5 pan but every time I have attempted this the loaf doesn’t rise over 1 inch above the pan’s edge as it should and actually falls back shrunken flat. I eat this loaf anyway, but I do not serve it to company, and in my solitude I grumble. Once or twice I have thrown away the misshapen loaf in frustration but this waste makes me too guilty on top of the anxiety. Oh mother, things aren’t going well. 

            When I began baking almost thirty years ago—I baked loaves, muffins, scones, pancakes and waffles, and pizza for the children—everything would be eaten though sometimes a single loaf remained stored in the freezer. Some recipes produced two loaves and we could only eat one at a time though eventually both loaves would be consumed, and then I would bake again. There were then in my life other means besides baking to reduce my anxiety: I had a full-time job at the University and the classroom usually calmed me though it did produce another medley of frustrations. These were manageable. But baking then was an act of love, and my anxiety did not enter my motivations. But now in my retirement there are no classrooms to relieve my anxieties. And the world keeps getting more and more dangerous and the doom scrolling depresses me and I don’t seem able to stop reading the bad news. I know that to fill the paper editors have to invent situations and stories but why am I reading them? 

Well, it is not yet Passover, the war in Ukraine continues, the Republicans continue to lie and deceive, and climate change threatens the planet and our civilizations. I think of Tom Lehrer’s sentiments in the The Merry Minuet: “The French hate the Germans./ The Germans hate the Poles./Italians hate Yugoslavs./ South Africans hate the Dutch/and I don't like anybody very much!”

            Okay, I’m off to the kitchen . . . today’s unnecessary baking will add sourdough baguettes to the store.