How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [38]
“Of course I do. But I like to experiment with my own, too.”
I turned the bottle around and around. “How can it last that long?”
“A mother dough like this can last for decades. Maybe even centuries. This one was carried from Ireland to Buffalo to the Wild, Wild West.”
I’d heard bits and pieces of the story from my grandmother. The starter was handed down from mother to daughter, generation after generation. “I don’t get how it keeps from getting spoiled.”
She scooped out a hefty measure of foamy pale-yellow-white starter and put it in a bowl. “Because,” she said, “we refresh it every week so it stays healthy.” She turned on the tap, testing the temperature with her fingers. “We add water that’s just barely warmer than your fingers.” When she got it right, she gestured. “Try it.”
I stuck my fingers under the stream. The water was the most bland temperature possible. Poppy filled a glass measuring cup and stirred it into the jar of starter. It foamed up.
“That’s kinda cool,” I said. “Like a chemistry experiment.”
Poppy gave me a half grin. “That’s exactly what it is. The yeasts are alive and hungry.”
“Do you have to have an old starter to make it work?”
“Not at all. Remember the one I was working on the first day? That’s new. I started it.” She beat a cup of flour into the mix, then scraped the sides of the container and poured the mass into a waiting clean quart jar, the kind you put peaches in. With a rubber band, she fastened a circle of cheesecloth over the mouth of the jar. “It needs to breathe,” she explained, “and a little time to grow. This evening I’ll put it back in the fridge.”
I bent over and inhaled the tangy scent of the starter in the bowl. “What am I doing to help, then? Mixing the bread?”
“I’ll let you work with the sourdough later, but for now let’s get some regular yeast breads going. Has your mother taught you any baking at all?”
“My mom? You’re kidding, right?” My mother considered cooking to be the devil’s way of keeping women chained to the home. Since my dad ran restaurants, she didn’t have to cook, and she didn’t. Ever. “I can’t think of a single thing my mom knows how to cook.”
“Oh, she knows. She just chooses not to. First step: Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and dry them on a clean towel.” She handed me one. “I keep the thin white towels for the bread and the colored terry cloth for hands.”
I followed instructions, watching as Poppy assembled ingredients on the big butcher-block island, which was as old as the house. Bags of flour, white and whole wheat and rye; salt and baking powder and yeast; oil and butter and eggs. “Your grandmother taught us both to cook. Your mother was very good, but she doesn’t like it.”
The phone rang, and we paused to see who it would be for. Ring-ring! Ring-ring! I thought of another kitchen, maybe down the block, maybe way down the road, and a woman picking it up. So weird. They were having a conversation right there.
I said, “My mom says that women shouldn’t do housework or cooking, that we need careers so we can be independent.”
“It’s good to have your own money, work you love,” Poppy agreed. “And if you don’t like to cook, you certainly don’t have to in today’s world. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the traditional female arts, either. They’re beautiful.” She measured out a cup of white flour and poured it over the starter. “Stir that in.”
Pleased, I used the sturdy wooden spoon and stirred the flour into the heady sponge, releasing the scent into the air. Poppy turned on the radio, and when “Glory Days” came on, we wiggled our hips. As we cooked and listened to the radio and talked, I was the happiest I’d been in ages.
So, naturally, God had to ruin it. A car came into the driveway, tires crunching over the gravel, and I felt Poppy shift. She gave a hard pat to the dough beneath her hands and wiped her palms on her apron. A woman came to the back door and knocked, even though she could see us looking at her through the screen. “Hello,” she called out. “I’m Nancy.”
Poppy rushed over to push the screen