23. Push Your Fingers All the Way Down

Vera: "Can I poke it now?" Lio has asked that four times since he came in, and four times Anton has given him the same one word. Soon.

Anton: And now it is soon. Oil your fingers, Lio. Push your fingers all the way down, until you feel the bottom of the tin.

Ten to One, Beside the Olive Jar

Vera: Lio kneels on the bench beside the big jar of olives, and Odile stands at the sink with her sleeves pushed past her elbows. She has been washing the dough off her hands for some time.

Anton: This dough clings because it is wet. Very wet. For every 500 grams of flour it drinks 400 of water. Bakers call that hydration, and here it is high, so the bread comes out light, with big uneven holes.

Vera: Too wet to knead, then.

Anton: Far too wet. We fold it instead. Lift one edge, stretch it up, lay it over the middle, turn the bowl. After a few rounds of folding and resting, the sticky marsh tightens into something smooth that holds its shape.

Vera: Where do people bake it this way?

Anton: All through the olive country of the warm south, and every village does it its own way. Some scatter onions, some grapes, some only salt. Its old name meant bread of the hearth, from the days when it baked in the ashes.

Vera: And who decides which way is right?

Anton: The grandmothers. Each of them is certain.

Question: Why do we poke holes all over the top?

Answer: The dimples keep the bread from rising into one big dome. They hold little pools of oil and salt, and they give the crust its hills and hollows, golden on top and soft below.

At the Work Table

For one tray of twelve pieces, in a tin 23 by 33 cm (9 by 13 inches): 500 g bread flour (4 cups), 7 g instant dried yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons), 10 g fine salt (1 3/4 teaspoons), 400 ml lukewarm water (1 2/3 cups), 55 g olive oil (4 tablespoons), flaky salt, a sprig of rosemary, twelve pitted olives, halved. Oven: 220°C (425°F).

Anton: One, for a child: stir the flour, yeast, salt and water with a spoon into a shaggy, sticky dough. No kneading. Cover and rest thirty minutes.

Anton: Two, for a child with wet hands: fold the dough over itself four times around the bowl. Rest thirty minutes, fold again, then rest thirty minutes more.

Anton: Three: pour half the oil into the tin, tip in the dough, rest fifteen minutes, then gently stretch it to the corners. Leave it forty-five minutes, until puffed and soft as moss.

Anton: Four, for a child: drizzle the rest of the oil, dimple the dough all over, press in the olives and rosemary, and scatter the flaky salt.

Vera: Feel every olive half before it goes in. One hidden stone can crack a tooth.

Anton: Five, for a grown-up: bake twenty-two to twenty-five minutes, until deep gold. Use oven gloves; the oil in the tin spits and is very hot. Cool for five minutes before lifting it out.

An Olive Farm, One Autumn Long Ago

Vera: The autumn I turned nineteen, I picked olives in the dry hills above a blue sea. The farmer's wife, Marta, baked in a black tin on the stone floor of the pressing room, where the air smelled green and bitter.

Vera: She pressed the dough with fingers so quick they looked like rain falling on wet sand, and she made us eat it standing up, warm, oil running down our wrists, because she said bread like that will not wait for chairs and plates and good manners.

Anton: She was right. Cold, it is still good. Warm, straight from the tin, it is a different bread altogether.

The Back Step, After One O'Clock

Three quick questions. One: How much water goes with 500 grams of flour? Two: Do we knead this dough? Three: How deep do the dimples go?

Answers. One: 400 grams, or 400 ml. Two: No, we fold it. Three: All the way to the bottom of the tin.

Vera: Odile is counting the dimples on her square. Thirty-one. Lio has eaten his olives out of every hole.

Anton: Then pour them both a glass of fizzy water with a squeeze of lemon and a torn basil leaf. Cold and sharp, it cuts through the oil the way a spring breeze clears a warm afternoon.

Key Words

Hydration: how much water a dough holds compared with its flour; 400 g of water to 500 g of flour is 80 percent.

Dimple: a deep fingertip hole pressed into dough before baking, to hold oil and keep the bread flat.

24. Roll Them as Thin as a Pencil

Anton: In the year 1679, so the old story goes, a young prince in a city below the high western mountains was too sickly to eat ordinary bread. His doctor sent for the court baker, who rolled the dough thinner and thinner until each loaf became a stick, baked crisp all the way through.

Vera: And did the prince grow well?

Anton: He grew up and ruled for many years. Whether the breadsticks did it, nobody can say. But the bakers of that city have rolled them ever since.

One O'Clock, at the Bread Board

Vera: Pavel has spread himself along the window seat where the jar of pencils stands, and he is measuring a pencil against his finger. Isa, at the corner of the board, wants to know why bread should snap.

Anton: Because some bread is for the hand, not for the knife. A breadstick goes in a pocket, in a lunch box, in a glass on the table. It keeps for a week. It is a loaf made for travelling.

Vera: Is the dough the same as the pizza dough?

Anton: A little firmer, with more oil. The oil coats the flour, so the sticks break cleanly instead of bending, like dry reeds in winter rather than green summer grass.

Vera: And can we give them a flavour?

Anton: Grated hard cheese, a pinch of dried herbs, or coarse salt pressed on before baking. But the first time, keep them plain and taste the bread itself.

Question: Why do breadsticks turn crisp when a loaf of the same dough stays soft inside?

Answer: A breadstick is so thin that the oven dries it right through, the way a twig dries in summer while the thick branch stays green. With almost no water left inside, it snaps.

A Valley Bakery, Years Ago

Anton: One winter, long ago, I worked in a valley where the mountain wind came down the chimney every night. Klara rolled the breadsticks there, at a marble table beside the wood stove, two at a time, one under each hand.

Anton: She never measured. Her palms went out and back, out and back, like the tide on a flat shore, and each stick came out as long as her forearm and no thicker than a pencil, while mine came out crooked as hazel twigs.

Vera: Did you ever catch up with her?

Anton: No. Some hands are born knowing. Mine had to learn, one crooked stick at a time, all through that long winter.

At the Work Table

For about 24 sticks, 25 cm (10 inches) long: 250 g bread flour (2 cups), 3 g instant dried yeast (1 teaspoon), 5 g fine salt (a scant teaspoon), 150 ml lukewarm water (2/3 cup), 30 g olive oil (2 tablespoons), and 2 tablespoons sesame seeds for rolling, if you like. Oven: 200°C (400°F).

Vera: Sesame is a seed that some people must never eat. Anyone with an allergy checks every ingredient and simply leaves the seeds out.

Anton: One, for a child: mix everything except the seeds and knead for five minutes, until soft and smooth. Cover and leave it to rise for forty-five minutes to an hour.

Anton: Two, for a child: press the dough into a rectangle about 24 by 15 cm (10 by 6 inches) and cut it into 24 strips with a dough scraper.

Anton: Three, for a child: roll each strip from the middle outwards under your fingers. Roll them as thin as a pencil; thicker sticks stay soft in the middle. Roll each in the seeds and lay them on lined trays, 2 cm apart.

Anton: Four, for a grown-up: bake fifteen to eighteen minutes, swapping the trays halfway with oven gloves, until golden all over. Children watch through the oven glass, not the open door.

Anton: Five: leave them on the trays. They crisp as they cool. Kept in a tin, they last a week.

The Biscuit Tin, Later

Three quick questions. One: How thin should a breadstick be? Two: When does it turn fully crisp? Three: What do you do if someone is allergic to sesame?

Answers. One: As thin as a pencil. Two: As it cools on the tray. Three: Leave the seeds out.

Vera: Isa's are long and straight. Pavel's are fat as caterpillars and bent into letters. He has written his name in bread.

Anton: Then they will bake soft in the middle and crisp at the ends, and he will eat them anyway. Klara would have laughed at mine the same way, quietly, and handed me another strip.

Vera: We will stand them in the tall glass in the middle of the table, then, crooked ones and all, like reeds at the edge of a pond.