Part 3: Noon

Noon brings the first doughs made with yeast. They are mixed before the midday meal, left to rise while the table is laid, and baked into breads that are torn and shared while still warm.

21. Yeast Is Alive, and It Is Hungry

Vera: Have you ever torn open a warm flatbread and found it hollow inside, as if someone had blown into it while it baked? And did you ever wonder who did the blowing?

Anton: Today we find out. It is the oven, a little water, and a guest new to this table. Yeast.

Noon, by the Flour Bin

Vera: Ivo is perched on the lid of the flour bin, and Kira has taken the stool where the noon sun falls across the boards. Both want to know what is in the little packet.

Anton: Dried yeast. It looks like sand, but it is alive. Each grain holds tiny living cells, a kind of fungus, fast asleep. Give them water, warmth and food, and they wake like bees on the first mild morning of spring.

Vera: And what do they eat?

Anton: Sugar, mostly the sugar hidden in flour. Yeast is alive, and it is hungry. As it eats, it breathes out a gas, and the stretchy dough holds the bubbles the way a soap film holds air, so the whole dough slowly swells.

Vera: Then the water must be hot?

Anton: Lukewarm. Never hot. Water much hotter than a bath kills yeast. Dip a finger in: if it feels like nothing at all, neither warm nor cold, it is right.

Question: Why does a thin, flat circle of dough puff up into a ball with a pocket inside?

Answer: The oven is very hot, so the water in the thin dough turns to steam all at once. The steam pushes the top and bottom apart before the crust sets, leaving a hollow.

At the Work Table

For eight pocket breads: 500 g bread flour (4 cups), 7 g instant dried yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons), 5 g sugar (1 teaspoon), 9 g fine salt (1 1/2 teaspoons), 325 ml lukewarm water (1 1/3 cups), 15 g olive oil (1 tablespoon). Oven: 250°C (480°F), with a baking tray heating inside.

Anton: One, for a child: stir the flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a bowl, pour in the water and oil, and mix until no dry flour is left.

Anton: Two, for a child: knead on the table for ten minutes, pushing away with the heel of the hand and folding back, until the dough is smooth and springy.

Anton: Three: cover the bowl and let the dough proof in a warm corner for one to one and a half hours, until doubled.

Anton: Four, for a child: press out the air, cut the dough into eight pieces, roll each into a ball and rest them under a cloth for ten minutes.

Anton: Five, for a child: roll each ball into a circle 15 cm (6 inches) wide and half a centimetre (1/4 inch) thick. Creases stop the puff.

Anton: Six, for a grown-up only: heat the oven with the tray inside for thirty minutes. In oven gloves, lay two or three circles on the hot tray and close the door at once. Children stand well back.

Anton: Seven, for a grown-up: bake four to five minutes, until they balloon. Lift them out with gloves and wrap them in a cloth. The steam inside is hot, so wait before tearing.

A Courtyard in the South, Long Ago

Vera: When I was small, we lived for one year in a hot, dry land at the eastern end of a sea. Our neighbour Leila baked in a domed clay oven under her lemon tree, and her courtyard smelled of smoke and lemon peel.

Vera: She slid the circles onto the oven floor with a long wooden paddle, and I watched them swell like puffballs after rain, while she sang under her breath and told me that a hurried dough always sulks.

Anton: Good advice. Dough keeps its own time, like the tide.

Lunch at the Long Table

Three quick questions. One: What does yeast eat? Two: How warm should the water be? Three: What blows up the pocket?

Answers. One: The sugars in flour. Two: Lukewarm, neither warm nor cold to a fingertip. Three: Steam from the water in the dough.

Vera: Ivo has stuffed his with cucumber already. And in the cups?

Anton: Cold mint tea: fresh mint leaves steeped in hot water by a grown-up, a little sugar, then cooled. It is clear and cool, like a stream in deep shade, and just right beside warm bread at noon.

Key Words

Yeast: tiny living cells that eat sugar and give off gas, which makes a dough rise.

Lukewarm: about as warm as your own skin, so that it feels neither warm nor cold.

Proof: to leave a yeast dough to rest and rise before it is baked.

22. A Hot Oven Is Half the Pizza

Anton: Before you read any further, go and turn your oven to its hottest setting, with a baking tray on the middle shelf. Do it now. A hot oven is half the pizza, and it needs time.

Vera: Forty minutes, he says. Long enough to let the dough rest, grate the cheese and argue about toppings.

Twelve O'Clock, by the Oven Door

Vera: Nils has pulled the step stool up beside the oven, where warm air shivers above the hob, and Jade sits by the basket of tomatoes, counting them twice. They each want a pizza of their own.

Anton: They shall have one each. Small pizzas are kind to children. Every hand shapes its own circle, and nobody quarrels over the bigger slice.

Vera: Where were they first made this way?

Anton: In the warm coastal towns of the south. Bakers there sold small rounds with tomato and oil from the street, folded in four, to fishermen and dock workers who ate them walking, like gulls that never sit down to a meal.

Vera: And why so hot?

Anton: In a big brick oven a pizza bakes in two minutes. The heat strikes so fast that the rim leaps up in blisters before the middle can dry. A home oven is gentler, so we give it every degree it has and heat the tray too, like a flat stone warming in the sun all afternoon.

Question: Why do the balls of dough rest again after shaping, when the dough has already risen?

Answer: Rolling tightens the dough like a coiled spring, and tight dough shrinks back when stretched. A short rest lets it relax, so it opens into a circle without tearing.

At the Work Table

For six small pizzas: 300 g bread flour (2 1/2 cups), 3 g instant dried yeast (1 teaspoon), 6 g fine salt (1 teaspoon), 180 ml lukewarm water (3/4 cup), 15 g olive oil (1 tablespoon). Topping: 200 g crushed tomatoes (3/4 cup) with a pinch of salt, 150 g grated melting cheese (1 1/2 cups). Oven: 250°C (480°F).

Anton: One, for a child: mix the flour, yeast and salt, add the water and oil, and knead for eight minutes until smooth.

Anton: Two: cover the bowl and let the dough rise for about an hour, until doubled.

Anton: Three, for a child: divide it into six pieces, roll each into a ball and give them a bench rest of fifteen minutes under a cloth.

Anton: Four, for a child: on a floured square of baking paper, press each ball out with the fingertips into a circle 15 cm (6 inches) wide, leaving a fat rim.

Anton: Five, for a child: spread two spoonfuls of tomato thinly, then scatter the cheese. Too much topping makes a soggy middle.

Anton: Six, for a grown-up only: in oven gloves, slide two pizzas on their paper onto the hot tray, using a flat board as a peel. Bake eight to ten minutes, until the rim is brown and the cheese bubbles.

Anton: Seven, for a grown-up: lift them out on the board while the children stand back, and wait two minutes before cutting. Melted cheese burns.

A Street Above the Bay, Long Ago

Anton: I learned pizza from Ottavio, in a steep street above a warm bay, where washing hung between the windows and his bakery door stood open to the sea wind. His oven was a dome of brick fed with olive wood.

Anton: I burned my first twenty pizzas. Twenty. He ate every one himself, black edges and all, and told me that a cook who throws his mistakes away learns nothing from them.

Vera: And the twenty-first?

Anton: That one he sold.

Vera: A hard teacher.

Anton: A fair one. He never raised his voice in that hot little room, and he never let me forget that the oven, not the baker, decides when a pizza is done.

Half Past Twelve, the Plates Out

Three quick questions. One: Why do we heat the tray with the oven? Two: What does a bench rest do? Three: What happens with too much topping?

Answers. One: So the bottom crisps at once. Two: It relaxes the dough so that it stretches. Three: The middle turns soggy.

Vera: Jade has laid her tomatoes in a smiling face. Nils has built a mountain of cheese.

Anton: Then Nils will learn what happens to mountains of cheese. Let him. A pizza teaches faster than any baker, in ten minutes, while the children watch the cheese swell and burst like mud pools in a hot spring.

Key Words

Bench rest: a short rest for shaped balls of dough, so that they relax before they are stretched.

Peel: a flat wooden or metal shovel for sliding bread and pizza into and out of a hot oven.