Desayuno

When I was little I didn’t have a very good sense of holidays and special occasions. Sure, I loved Christmas as much as any kid, but at five years old, as far as I was concerned Christmas was something that had happened three times in the history of the world. It couldn’t be counted on, and it was unrealistic to try to think far enough in advance to see it coming next time. Being told that my birthday was in eight months was like being told that Ghana is to the west: Entirely true, but I’d never make it all the way there, even if I packed a lunch. No, I celebrated smaller and more frequent holidays: Beach day; dad letting me ride on the hood of the car up the driveway day; going to the movies day. And perhaps the most important of them all was baking day.

On baking day, I would come into the kitchen in the morning and the counter would be lined with red and green Medaglia D’Oro coffee canisters. My mom did not use rectangular loaf pans. She made tall, round, mushroom-topped loaves in old coffee cans. When they came out of the oven, the tops were for eating hot, dripping with melted butter, and the bottom parts that cooked in the cans were saved for slicing. This was not a rule, it was just how things generally happened. I was the only kid in my preschool to bring circular PB&Js to lunch.

I don’t remember the first time I helped my mom make bread. In my earliest memories the warm smell of yeast and molasses was already familiar and comforting. My mom let me stir while she added the warm milk and the oil and the eggs and the yeast, and I would breathe in the rich sweet smell. Then as the flour went in she would take over when it got too thick for me to handle. I would try to help with the kneading, sitting up on the counter next to the dough, but I just wasn’t strong enough.

We always made a very large batch. We made dough to fill what seemed like endless coffee canisters (it was probably four or six, but I remember it as being more) with enough left for at least one sheet of cinnamon raisin rolls. And there needed to be a little left over after that for me to perform at least one experiment. A long snake of dough baked into a breadstick, a thin sheet rolled up around cheese, a face that would distort as it rose.

By the time I was eighteen, somehow I had become the baker in the family. When people wanted fresh bread, they asked me to make it. My mom, who had walked me through the process when I was too little to knead on my own, asked me about my techniques. I grew sourdoughs on top of the fridge and filled our oven with bricks. I scoured the internet for recipes, looking for ways to get the texture and the crust to do exactly what I wanted. It’s not that I made better bread, I just made more of it. I learned how to tell when a dough was ready, or if I had made a mistake, by how it felt.

Despite that, I haven’t made that first bread since I left Hawaii at fourteen. I don’t remember the recipe well enough now. The milk had to be scalded, and then cooled, and there was melted shortening and molasses. I could guess, but I wouldn’t get it right. It was a rich bread. Light brown and tender, sweet and soft and crumbly.

I don’t drink coffee very often, but I have considered taking it up, just to build up a collection of empty red and green canisters of my own.

Posted by Tom