47. Roll It Up Like a Snail and Cut It into Wheels

Vera: Roll it up like a snail and cut it into wheels, Anton! The children have been asking for it all evening, and I think they are right.

Anton: Pizza you can hold in one hand without the topping sliding off. Children are good engineers.

The Bench by the Wall

Vera: Zofia, wedged on the bench between the wall and the bread board, has already counted the wheels she plans to eat. Four. She has written the number in the flour with her finger.

Anton: The dough is plain pizza dough, the same we stretched flat at noon. Tonight we roll it out in a rectangle, spread it, and roll it up again, like a fern curling back into its bud.

Vera: The rolling is the hard part. Too loose and the spiral falls open in the oven. Too tight and the middle bursts up like a mushroom.

Anton: Snug. Like a blanket round a sleeping child, warm but not squeezing.

At the Work Table

For twelve spirals, the dough: 300 g plain flour (2 1/2 cups), 4 g instant yeast (1 1/4 teaspoons), 1 teaspoon sugar, 5 g salt (3/4 teaspoon), 180 ml warm water (3/4 cup) and 1 tablespoon olive oil.

The filling: 120 g thick tomato sauce (1/2 cup), 1 teaspoon dried oregano, 150 g grated mild melting cheese (1 1/2 cups) and, if you like, 50 g finely chopped ham or sweet pepper. A tin 23 by 33 cm (9 by 13 inches), lined with baking paper. Oven: 200°C (400°F).

Vera: Knead the dough for eight minutes, cover and let it rise for an hour.

Anton: Roll it on a floured table into a rectangle 30 by 40 cm (12 by 16 inches), with a long side towards you.

Vera: A child spreads the sauce thinly, leaving a strip 2 cm (3/4 inch) wide bare along the far edge, then scatters the oregano, the cheese and the ham or pepper.

Anton: A child rolls it up from the near side, snug but not tight, and presses the bare strip onto the roll to seal it. If the roll has stretched, squeeze it gently back to 40 cm (16 inches).

Vera: Cut it into twelve slices. A grown-up can use a sharp knife, or a child can slide a length of clean cotton thread under the roll, cross the ends over the top and pull. The thread cuts without squashing.

Anton: Set the wheels cut side up in the tin, a little apart. Cover and let them rise for thirty minutes.

Vera: A grown-up bakes them for eighteen to twenty-two minutes, until the edges are golden and the cheese bubbles, and lifts the tin out with oven gloves. Wait five minutes. Hot cheese burns.

A Café on the Quay, One Summer

Vera: The summer I was eighteen, I washed dishes in a café on a quay in a warm land of olive groves to the south. It belonged to Salvo, whose whole café was one room with a striped awning, three tables, and a clay oven that never went out.

Vera: At five o'clock, when the children came up from the beach with sand on their knees and salt in their hair, Salvo rolled up the leftover pizza dough with tomato and cheese, cut it into wheels and sold them through the window, one coin each.

Vera: He let me roll the last one every evening. Mine always burst in the middle. Salvo said that meant I had a big heart and small patience.

Anton: Did you ever get one right?

Vera: On my last evening. I rolled twelve, and not one burst. He put them in a paper bag for the train and would not take a coin for them.

Half Past Seven, the Oven Ticking

Question: Zofia asks why the far edge is left without any sauce.

Answer: Sauce makes dough slippery, and slippery dough will not stick to itself. The bare strip of dough presses onto the roll and holds it closed, like a seal on an envelope.

Three quick questions. One: How big is the rectangle? Two: What can a child use instead of a knife? Three: Which way up go the wheels in the tin?

Answers. One: 30 by 40 cm (12 by 16 inches). Two: A loop of clean cotton thread. Three: Cut side up.

Anton: Look. Each wheel has opened a little in the heat, like a snail putting out its horns after rain.

Anton: Some lands fold their bread round a filling, and some lay it on top. This one hides it inside a spiral, so every bite has a little of everything.

Vera: And to drink, what Salvo sold to the beach children: cold fizzy water with the juice of an orange squeezed into it and one slice floating on top, cold as a spring in the shade. Zofia, you said four wheels. That was five.

48. Dip It in the Sweet Water, Then in the Seeds

Vera: Timur is sitting by the cold hearth with a bowl of sesame seeds in his lap, letting them run through his fingers like sand through an hourglass. He has been told not to eat them yet. He is eating them.

Anton: Let him. There are plenty. Tonight we make rings of bread, twisted like rope and covered all over in seeds.

The Cold Hearth

Vera: Twisted? We braided bread in the afternoon. Is this the same?

Anton: Simpler. Two strands, not three. You roll one long rope, fold it in half, and the two halves twist round each other like the stems of a bindweed climbing a fence.

Vera: And the seeds stay on how?

Anton: Dip it in the sweet water, then in the seeds. Grape syrup or honey stirred into water. It glues the seeds on and turns the crust deep brown and shining.

Vera: Where are they eaten?

Anton: All around the narrow seas to the south-east, from carts on street corners and trays carried on heads, mostly in the morning with white cheese. A whole city there wakes smelling of toasted sesame, the way a meadow wakes smelling of wet grass.

At the Work Table

For eight rings, the dough: 500 g plain or bread flour (4 cups), 7 g instant yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons), 1 teaspoon sugar, 8 g salt (1 1/2 teaspoons), 300 ml warm water (1 1/4 cups) and 2 tablespoons oil.

For the coating: 60 g dark grape syrup or honey (3 tablespoons) stirred into 120 ml water (1/2 cup), and 150 g sesame seeds (1 cup). Oven: 220°C (425°F).

Vera: Sesame is a common allergy. Anyone with an allergy should check the ingredients first; the rings can also be baked plain, brushed only with the sweet water. Honey is not for babies under one.

Anton: Knead the dough for ten minutes, until smooth and firm. Cover it and let it rise for an hour.

Vera: A grown-up toasts the sesame in a dry pan over low heat, stirring, for three or four minutes, until pale gold, then tips it onto a plate. Seeds jump and burn quickly, so small children stay back from the stove.

Anton: Cut the dough into eight pieces. A child rolls each into a rope about 60 cm (24 inches) long, folds it in half, twists the two halves together and presses the ends into a ring.

Vera: A child dips each ring in the sweet water, then lays it in the sesame and presses and turns it until it is covered all over.

Anton: Set the rings on lined trays, stretch each a little wider, to about 15 cm (6 inches), and let them rest for fifteen minutes.

Vera: A grown-up bakes them for fifteen to eighteen minutes, until deep golden brown, and takes the trays out with oven gloves.

The Ferry Landing, at Dawn

Anton: I first ate these at a ferry landing on a narrow strip of sea, where gulls sat on every post and the boats crossed back and forth between two shores all day. The ring seller was Selim, who carried forty rings stacked on a wooden tray on his head and never once touched it with his hands.

Anton: I was going to work in a bakery on the far shore, and I had no money for breakfast. Selim looked at me, took a ring off the top of his tray and hung it on my finger. Pay me tomorrow, he said.

Vera: And did you?

Anton: Every morning for two years. One ring each day, and every day I paid for the day before. He never let me pay for the last one. When I left, he wrapped two rings in paper for the boat and said nobody should cross water hungry.

Nine o'Clock, Crumbs on the Cloth

Question: Timur asks why the rings are stretched wider before they bake.

Answer: The dough springs back in the oven and the hole shrinks. If the ring is not stretched, the hole closes up and it bakes as a bun with a dent, not a ring.

Three quick questions. One: How long is each rope? Two: What glues the seeds on? Three: Who toasts the sesame?

Answers. One: About 60 cm (24 inches). Two: Water sweetened with grape syrup or honey. Three: A grown-up, at the stove.

Vera: Timur has hung a ring on each wrist, like a pair of bracelets, and is holding his arms up so the seeds will not fall.

Anton: That is how Selim's customers carried them home. A ring on the arm and both hands free.

Vera: Then he can keep them there until breakfast, and we will eat them with white cheese and cucumber, the way Selim's customers did.

Anton: If they last that long. I have never known a sesame ring to see the sunrise in a house full of children.