Part 4: Afternoon

The afternoon brings sweet doughs, made rich with milk, butter and eggs and scented with cinnamon, cardamom and honey. These are the breads children come home hungry for: rolled, filled, braided, glazed, and best eaten while still a little warm.

31. Tight as a Snail Shell

Anton: "Hunger is the best sauce in the world." A character says it in a long, wandering story written about four hundred years ago, and every baker since has known it is true, especially at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Vera: Then the children will find these buns very well sauced. They have been sniffing the cinnamon jar since lunch. Both of them. Twice.

Three O'Clock, the Schoolbags Dropped

Vera: Mateo came in and dropped his schoolbag by the boot rack under the coats. Ines is still wearing her scarf, sitting by the radiator with her hands in the bag of brown sugar. Neither of them wants to wait.

Anton: They must, a little. Today the dough becomes richer: milk instead of water, an egg, butter. Richer doughs rise more slowly, like a river in late summer, heavy and unhurried. And today we roll something inside it.

Vera: The cinnamon paste.

Anton: Butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, spread over a sheet of dough and rolled up tight as a snail shell. Every slice shows the spiral. These buns are baked across the cold northern lands, where people stop in the middle of the afternoon to eat them.

Question: Why do we cut the roll with a piece of thread and not a knife?

Answer: A loop of thread squeezes through the soft roll from all sides at once, so every slice keeps its round shape. A knife presses down on it and squashes the spiral flat.

At the Work Table

For twelve buns in a buttered tin 23 by 33 cm (9 by 13 inches). Dough: 500 g plain flour (4 cups), 7 g instant dried yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons), 50 g sugar (1/4 cup), 6 g fine salt (1 teaspoon), 260 ml lukewarm milk (1 cup plus 1 tablespoon), 1 egg, 60 g soft butter (4 tablespoons).

Filling: 70 g soft butter (5 tablespoons), 100 g brown sugar (1/2 cup, packed), 12 g ground cinnamon (1 1/2 tablespoons). Glaze: 60 g icing sugar (1/2 cup), 1 tablespoon milk. Oven: 190°C (375°F).

Anton: One, for a child: mix and knead the dough for ten minutes, until smooth. Cover and let it rise for one to one and a half hours.

Anton: Two, for a child: stir the filling into a soft paste. Roll the dough out to 40 by 30 cm (16 by 12 inches) and spread the paste to the edges, leaving one long edge bare.

Anton: Three, for a child: roll it up tightly from the other long side and pinch the seam. Slide a thread under the roll, cross the ends over the top and pull, to cut twelve slices.

Anton: Four: set them cut side up in the tin, cover, and let them rise about forty minutes, until puffy and touching. Patience.

Anton: Five, for a grown-up: bake twenty-two to twenty-five minutes, until golden, and lift the tin out in oven gloves. The melted sugar underneath is very hot.

Anton: Six, for a child: when they are warm, not hot, stir the icing sugar and milk together and drizzle it over the top.

A Café by the Frozen Harbour, One Winter

Vera: At twenty-two I spent one winter in that cold north. Ingrid kept a café by the harbour, where the fishing boats stood locked in ice all season and the windows dripped with steam from the inside.

Vera: At three o'clock every afternoon the whole town seemed to come in, stamp the snow off, and sit down to a bun and a hot drink. Ingrid told me that stopping was the rule there, as fixed as the tides, and that a person who never stops will never taste anything properly.

Anton: A good rule for bakers, too. Dough knows it already. Bakers forget.

Four O'Clock, the Kettle On

Three quick questions. One: What makes this dough richer than bread dough? Two: What do we cut the roll with? Three: When does the glaze go on?

Answers. One: Milk, an egg and butter. Two: A thread. Three: When the buns are warm, not hot.

Vera: Ines has finally taken off her scarf. Mateo is unrolling his bun in one long ribbon, to see where the spiral ends.

Anton: Let them stop, like Ingrid's town. Pour red bush tea with a little milk. It has no caffeine, so the children can share the pot, and it tastes faintly of honey and dry grass, like a meadow at the end of summer.

32. A Patient Paste Is Silk

Anton: Picture a baker in a white cap, early in the morning, in a steep harbour town on the islands far to the east. She lifts the lid from a square tin, turns out a loaf as white as a cloud, and carries it to the counter with both hands, the way you would hold a sleeping kitten.

Vera: And the customers queue at her door for it before the sun is over the roofs?

Anton: Every morning. It is the softest loaf in this book, and it stays soft for days.

Half Past Two, at the Little Stove

Vera: Leni is standing on the step by the small stove, where the milk pan sits ready, and Kofi has the whisk. He is waving it like a conductor in front of the spice shelf.

Anton: Today we cook a little flour before it goes into the bread. Flour and milk, stirred over a low flame, until they thicken into a paste like pudding. Bakers call it a water roux.

Vera: Why cook it first?

Anton: Heat makes the starch in flour swell and soak up the milk. Bakers say it gelatinizes. Once cooked, it holds that water and will not let go. So the dough can carry more liquid than usual, and the loaf comes out softer, like moss in the shade after rain.

Vera: And why three pieces in the tin, not one log?

Anton: Three rolls push against each other and climb, like trees in a close wood growing tall towards the light. The loaf comes out higher, and it tears into soft sections.

Question: Why does this bread stay soft for days when other loaves go dry?

Answer: The cooked paste keeps the water locked inside swollen grains of starch. As the bread cools and sits, the water stays where it is, instead of escaping into the air.

The Shop with the Sliding Door, Long Ago

Anton: I spent a spring in one of those island towns, working for Noriko. Her shop had a sliding wooden door and a small brass bell, and from the counter you could see the ferries crossing the bay.

Anton: She showed me how to cook the paste on my first morning. I stirred too hard and too hot, and it went lumpy like river gravel. She tipped it out without a word, poured fresh milk, and stood beside me, her hand over mine, until I learned to stir slowly enough.

Vera: Did she ever say anything about it?

Anton: Only that a hurried paste is gravel and a patient paste is silk.

At the Work Table

For one loaf in a 900 g (2 lb) loaf tin. Water roux: 25 g bread flour (3 tablespoons), 125 ml milk (1/2 cup). Dough: 350 g bread flour (2 3/4 cups), 7 g instant dried yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons), 40 g sugar (3 tablespoons), 6 g fine salt (1 teaspoon), 120 ml lukewarm milk (1/2 cup), 1 egg, 30 g soft butter (2 tablespoons). Oven: 180°C (350°F).

Anton: One, for a grown-up at the stove: whisk the flour and milk in a small pan over low heat for two to three minutes, until thick and the whisk leaves lines. Keep the handle turned in; hot paste spits. Cool to lukewarm.

Anton: Two, for a child: mix the dry things, add the milk, egg and cooled paste, and knead five minutes. Add the butter and knead ten minutes more, until smooth and stretchy.

Anton: Three: cover and let it rise for an hour, until doubled.

Anton: Four, for a child: cut the dough into three pieces. Roll each into an oval 20 cm (8 inches) long, then roll it up from a short end, like a sleeping bag. Set the three rolls side by side in the buttered tin.

Anton: Five: let them rise forty-five to sixty minutes, until they reach just below the rim, and brush them with milk.

Anton: Six, for a grown-up: bake thirty to thirty-five minutes, with foil laid on top if it browns too fast. Turn it out in oven gloves and cool it on a rack.

The Bread Board, Before the Lamps

Three quick questions. One: What is a water roux made of? Two: Why cook it slowly? Three: How many rolls of dough go into the tin?

Answers. One: Flour and milk. Two: So it turns smooth, not lumpy. Three: Three.

Vera: Kofi is pulling the loaf apart along its three humps. It comes away in long, soft strands, like wool.

Anton: Silk, Noriko would say. Let him pull. Some bread is for slicing. This one is for tearing with the hands.

Key Words

Water roux: a paste of flour cooked with milk or water, added to a dough to make the bread softer and keep it fresh longer.

Gelatinize: what starch does when it is heated in water: it swells and thickens into a soft gel.