27. Low Heat and a Little Patience

Anton: Look closely at this pan. Black iron, heavy as a river stone, flat, with no sides at all. Its face is smooth as a pebble from forty years of butter, and along one edge there is a dent where somebody once dropped it on a stone floor.

Vera: It was hanging on the wall when I first came to this kitchen. Today it is coming down. No oven at all today.

Two O'Clock, by the Cold Hearth

Vera: Moritz is sitting on the coal box beside the old hearth, swinging his legs, and Iris has the cornmeal bowl in her lap by the dresser. They cannot believe bread can be baked in a pan.

Anton: These are griddle muffins, from the damp green islands of the north-west. Round, flat, about as thick as a thumb is wide, golden on both faces and pale around the middle like a birch trunk.

Vera: Why not in the oven, like the rolls?

Anton: Because once there were more griddles than ovens. A family with no oven could still have warm bread, cooked over a low fire, turned once, and eaten split and toasted. The secret is low heat and a little patience. In the old towns there, a muffin man once walked the streets at teatime with a tray on his head, ringing a hand bell.

Vera: And the cornmeal?

Anton: It keeps the soft dough from sticking to the tray and the pan, and it gives each face a fine crunch, like sand on a wet shell. Semolina does the same.

Vera: Iris has already dusted the table, the floor and Moritz.

Question: Why do we split a griddle muffin with a fork instead of cutting it with a knife?

Answer: A fork tears the inside into tiny hills and holes that catch melted butter. A knife slices it flat and smooth, and the butter just slides away.

At the Work Table

For eight muffins, cooked in a heavy dry pan: 300 g bread flour (2 1/2 cups), 4 g instant dried yeast (1 1/4 teaspoons), 10 g sugar (2 teaspoons), 5 g fine salt (a scant teaspoon), 220 ml lukewarm milk (a scant cup), 15 g soft butter (1 tablespoon), and 3 tablespoons fine cornmeal or semolina for dusting.

Anton: One, for a child: mix everything except the cornmeal and knead eight minutes. The dough should be soft and a little sticky. Cover and let it rise for an hour.

Anton: Two, for a child: cut eight pieces, roll them into balls and pat each into a disc 8 cm (3 inches) wide and 2 cm (3/4 inch) thick.

Anton: Three, for a child: set them on a tray dusted with cornmeal, dust the tops too, cover, and leave them thirty to forty minutes, until puffy.

Anton: Four, for a grown-up only: warm the pan over low to medium heat, with the handle turned in, away from the table edge. No oil.

Anton: Five, for a grown-up: cook four at a time, six to seven minutes a side, turning once with a spatula. If they brown too fast, turn the heat down. When the sides spring back, they are done. If you are unsure, cut one open: the middle should be soft, not wet.

Anton: Six, for a child: after ten minutes of cooling, poke a fork all round the middle and pull the halves apart. They keep for two days in a tin, and much longer in the freezer.

A Stone Kitchen by the Sea, Long Ago

Vera: One wet summer, when I was twenty-one, I lodged with Peggy in a cottage on a cliff in those green islands. A grey cat slept on her coal box, and the rain blew sideways past the kitchen window for days together.

Vera: Peggy cooked muffins on a griddle just like this one, and while they browned slowly she sat beside me and taught me to knit, and she said that the slowest jobs in a kitchen were always the ones you remembered best.

Anton: Did you learn to knit?

Vera: One sock. I still have it, and it still has no partner.

By the Lamp, a Rainy Early Afternoon

Three quick questions. One: What heat cooks griddle muffins? Two: How do you know they are done? Three: What do you split them with?

Answers. One: Low to medium heat. Two: The sides spring back when pressed. Three: A fork.

Vera: Moritz has pulled his apart and is staring at the holes inside. He says it looks like a sponge from the bottom of the sea, full of tiny caves.

Anton: It is the yeast's work, every hole. Toast the halves, butter them, and pour warm milk with a spoon of honey stirred in, though never honey for a baby under one. Rain outside, butter melting, a warm cup in two hands. Some afternoons need nothing more.

28. Let It Blister, the Blisters Are the Flavour

Anton: Ola is kneeling on a chair in front of the oven, her nose nearly on the glass, her breath making a small cloud on it. Inside, a flat oval of dough has begun to bubble like a pond in a sudden downpour. "It is growing blisters," she whispers.

Vera: She has not moved for three whole minutes. I have never seen her so still.

Noon, the Oven at Its Hottest

Vera: Jonas is less patient. He is sitting on the floor by the cool larder door, as far from the heat as I asked him, and calling out every ten seconds to ask whether it is done yet.

Anton: Nearly. This bread bakes in five minutes because the oven is as hot as it will go. In the lands of wheat and melons far to the east, bakers slap it onto the inside wall of a clay oven so hot that it cooks in less than three.

Vera: And the yogurt? We have not used it in bread before.

Anton: Yogurt makes the dough soft and a little sour. Its sharpness relaxes the stretchy strands in the flour, so the bread tears gently instead of fighting back like a rope. It is the tenderest bread at this table.

Vera: And what do people eat it with, over there?

Anton: Almost everything. A bowl of lentils, grilled vegetables, soft white cheese with mint. Children fold it around chopped tomato and cucumber and run off with it, the way swallows snatch a meal on the wing.

Question: Why does this bread get dark blisters while rolls bake evenly golden?

Answer: The heat is so fierce that small bubbles near the surface swell and scorch before the rest of the crust has time to brown, the way the first leaves on a tree catch the autumn colour before the others.

A Yard Behind the Mulberry Tree, Long Ago

Anton: I spent one summer working in that eastern land. Ismail baked in a yard behind a mulberry tree, where fallen berries stained the dust purple, and his oven was a great clay jar sunk into the ground up to its neck.

Anton: He laid each oval of dough on a padded cushion and pressed it to the inside wall with one swift push, then peeled the breads off with a long iron hook. The heat had burned every hair off his forearms. He only laughed when I stared at them.

Vera: Did he ever let you try it yourself?

Anton: Once. My bread fell into the fire. He fished it out, brushed off the ash, and ate it in front of me, very slowly, and said it was the best I would ever bake, because it was the first.

At the Work Table

For six flatbreads: 300 g plain flour (2 1/2 cups), 4 g instant dried yeast (1 1/4 teaspoons), 5 g sugar (1 teaspoon), 5 g fine salt (a scant teaspoon), 150 g plain yogurt (2/3 cup), 90 ml lukewarm water (6 tablespoons), 15 g oil (1 tablespoon), 30 g melted butter (2 tablespoons) for brushing. Oven: 250°C (480°F), the hottest it goes, with a heavy tray heating inside.

Anton: One, for a child: mix everything but the butter and knead for five minutes with oiled hands. The dough is soft and a little sticky. Cover and let it rise for one to one and a half hours.

Anton: Two, for a child: cut six pieces, roll them into balls and rest them for ten minutes. Then roll or pull each into a teardrop about 20 cm (8 inches) long and half a centimetre (1/4 inch) thick.

Anton: Three, for a grown-up only: in oven gloves, lay two breads on the hot tray and bake four to six minutes, until puffed and blistered with brown patches. Children stay well back while the door is open.

Anton: Four, for a grown-up: for darker blisters, switch on the top grill for the last minute and watch. It burns in seconds.

Anton: Five, for a child: once the bread rests on the board, brush it with melted butter. Stack the breads in a clean cloth, one on another like fallen leaves, to keep them soft and warm.

The Long Table, Plates Warming

Three quick questions. One: Why does this bread bake so fast? Two: What makes it so tender? Three: Who lays the dough on the hot tray?

Answers. One: The oven is as hot as it goes. Two: The yogurt. Three: A grown-up, in oven gloves.

Vera: Ola has torn the first one in half. Steam is rising from it like mist off a field after rain.

Anton: Tear, never cut. Let it blister, the blisters are the flavour. Ismail used to say a pale flatbread is only half awake. Jonas, it is done now. Come and see.