The Baker Man Nancy McAtavey   © Copyright 2024 by Nancy McAtavey

Photo courtesy of the author..

Jim’s medium was flour; Nancy mixed words into stories. Both had failed recipes. Would that loaf of wheat bread end up in the trash? Would that rejected story stay in the bottom drawer?

I first suspected my husband’s affair in late August during the peak of the garden season. Those weeks when the little lettuces hid in the shadows of the squash trellis and the clusters of Italian tomatoes hung heavy and low to the ground. The Big Boys and Jet Stars ripened pink to red with the heat of the sun and their daily drip, drip, drip from the irrigation system. They grew healthy and doubled in size on a steady diet of Epsom salts and pulverized egg shells.

Jim and I had a favorite lunch on those hot summer days: one thick, juicy slice of tomato between two pieces of white bread…the kind we ate as kids with peanut butter and jelly or pressed ham or tuna salad on Fridays because we were Catholic and it was a no meat day. With a smear of mayonnaise and a few iceberg lettuce leaves, it was our summer sandwich made in heaven.

One day as he sliced and assembled and I poured the milk, I noticed that the bread was not in the usual wrapper, the one with red, white and blue balloons. It was in a cellophane bag with just a simple logo: Panera Bread.

“Oh,” I asked. “Something new?”

“Well, yeah,” he replied. “Just thought I’d change it up a bit. Same old thing gets boring day after day. Right?”

Well, sure, I thought. Same old, same old.

That cellophane packaging appeared again and again. Thick slices of wheat popped out of the toaster. Sourdough, spread with whole grain mustard, sandwiched the thin layers of ham and Swiss cheese. I questioned him again about the change in his shopping habits and the disappearance of an old familiar brand.

“The store’s right next to Hannaford,” he said. “The bread’s made fresh every morning. And I like being able to slice my own.”

“And how about the price? Just curious, you know. What’s the difference in price?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “I don’t look at the prices.”

Hmmm, I thought. Same answer I get each time I ask him the price of scallops or lamb chops.

And then one day in November, I came across an e-mail message describing “rapid pick-up… at the time you choose with no lines …no wait.”

“What’s this?” I asked. “You’re getting e-mails from a bread company?”

“Well, sure,” he said. “Look what they’re offering. You go on-line, place your order and pay for it. Then you go to the store and it’s there waiting for you on the pick-up shelf. Talk about convenience, huh?”

Well, sure. So convenient, I thought.

The next week the brown Panera shopping bag contained three loaves.

“What are you going to do with all of these?”

“Freeze it,” he said. “I can just take out the kind we want for breakfast or lunch and it will be thawed in a minute. And today, I saw a notice that they’re going to be making a white stuffing bread for the Thanksgiving holiday. How about that? How many loaves should I order?”

“We’re not cooking a turkey. We’re going to my cousin Carol’s for dinner.”

“Perfect,” he said. “I’ll order two.”

“Are you listening to me? There’s no turkey! And this whole bread thing is out of control. What are you going to do about your Panera Bread fix when we go to Maine this winter? The nearest store has to be hours away in Augusta or Auburn.”

He thought for a moment and then answered. “Easy. I’ll have it shipped. Fed Ex and UPS go up to the mountain every day.”

“You know that’s not going to work,” I said with a smile. “You know that, right?”

Hmmm,” he said. “Ham or turkey for lunch?”

The writing was on the wall. I woke up and smelled the coffee. Or rather the toast. My husband was deep into an affair with Panera Bread.

Our first walk in December found us bundled up against a cold wind. We made our way through our neighborhood decorated for the holidays with nodding reindeer and spiral Christmas trees. White window candles glowed in darkened rooms; colored lights flashed and blinked as we walked down one street and around the corner to the next.

Jim’s voice cut through the stillness of the late afternoon. “I’ve made a decision.”

“What? What did you say?” I asked.

“I’ve made a decision about the bread.”

“The what?”

“The bread…the BREAD!”

“And?”

“I’m going to make my own. I can start the dough in the morning before I go out to ski and then let it rest until lunch. Or I can bake on a day when the lifts are on wind hold. What do you think?”

I turned my jacket collar up against the wind. Oh, my God, I thought. He’s got time on his hands. Wants to learn how to bake? Obviously retired. Maybe even a bit crazy.

That night I called my cousin Norma in Florida. Her husband Em had been baking bread for years. I needed help. Guidance. I needed her to be there for me. “Are you sitting down?” I asked.

“What’s up?”

“It’s Jim. He wants to be a baker. A BREAD baker!”

“Really? That’s perfect. Just leave this to us. We’ll buy him some basics for Christmas and before you know it the flour will be flying all over that kitchen.”

Christmas morning dawned sunny with an inch of new snow on the ground. A perfect day for the two of us to drink coffee, sip a mimosa (or two!) and enjoy Eggs Benedict on, yes, you guessed it… Panera English muffins. We ooh-ed and ah-ed our way through the gifts until there were just two presents left under the tree.

“These are from Norma and Em,” I said. Jim opened a copy of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and then tore the wrapping off a commercial bread pan. His smile said it all.

We headed to Maine at the beginning of January. The thermometer hovered in the teens, then dropped to single digits. The afternoon sky darkened shortly after 4 p.m. and the wind drifted in the twenty-one steps to our front door.

As soon as we unpacked, Jim settled in front of the fireplace with a glass of wine and his baking book. He spent an hour turning the pages from front to back, to the middle and back to the beginning again.

“How’s that book?” I asked.

“I need some things,” he replied.

“Like what?”

“A need another pan. And yeast and a scale.”

“A scale? For what?”

“To measure everything. The sugar and flour. And then the milk and water.”

“This sounds like a lot of work. How about just looking up a Betty Crocker recipe? Can’t you check the Gold Medal web site? Your Grammy Mabel never used a scale.”

“You don’t understand. This is how the real bakers do it. It’s the way Em does it. It’s why they sent me this book!”

A trip to the grocery story. An order to Amazon Prime with two day shipping and he was in business.

“What are you making?” I asked.

“English muffins.”

“First?”

“Yes.”

Six muffins, baked and then fried in the black skillet. The next morning they were toasted and topped with a poached egg and a few slices of crisp bacon. They were chewy and on the small size. But the crusts were the perfect vehicle for mopping up the egg yolk.

A few days later, the cookbook and cannisters were back on the counter.

“What’s next?” I asked.

“Light wheat.”

The first loaf came out of the oven…hot, brown, yeasty. “It’s baked to perfection,” Jim announced.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Because I used a thermometer to measure the internal temperature.”

“Which is?”

“190 degrees.”

“And you know that because?”

“It’s in the book.”

Oh, right, I thought. The book.

But he was not happy. The bread was delicious but nowhere near the size of a Panera loaf.

Photos courtesy of the author..

“Well, maybe they use different pans, “I said. “ And they’re baking in commercial ovens.”

He scratched his head, got out his book and started reading. He picked up the jar of yeast. “Ah. I’ve found the problem.”

“And that would be?”

He pointed to the label on the jar. “It’s right here,” he said. “Refrigerate after opening.”

“But you just took it out of the fridge.”

“Yeah, but you brought this jar from home. How long was it sitting in the cupboard? I think I have dead yeast!”

Hmmm, I thought to myself. Bakers should read labels. Note directions for storage.

“Oh, and one other thing. You have to mix the yeast in a bowl with water and add sugar and that has to rise.”

I tried to add a note of surprise to my voice. “ Really? And what have you been doing with your yeast?”

“Oh, I’ve just been throwing it in the flour. Mixing it altogether before adding the liquids.”

But wait, I thought. Wasn’t that in the directions? In the book?

And with that, he picked up the car keys, grabbed his coat and headed six miles up the road to the market. A half hour later, he returned with packets of dry yeast and a look of resolve in his eyes.

The next day we had our first promise of spring in the mountains. Bright sunshine, a blue bird sky and the temperature warm enough to melt the ice on the walkway. Jim skied early, anxious to get in a few runs before the March sun softened the trails. By noon time, he was done. Out came the white apron. Out came the book.

“It’s a beautiful day,” I said. “Let’s drive up to Fotter’s. I need a few things for dinner. Some romaine and a red onion.”

“Ok,” he said. “But let me start the bread. Once I get it in the pans, we’ll have an hour and a half before it goes in the oven.”

“And can we stop at The Boot Strap? Have a late lunch?”

“Great idea,” he said.

At three o’clock, the dough was in the pans and we were on our way. After a quick stop at the market, we made our way across the muddy parking lot to the restaurant. Inside, a dozen young people sat at the bar drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon, rum and coke or the drink of the day: tall Margaritas with salted rims and wedges of lime. Jim and I ordered wine, chatted with the bartender and listened to the mountain news and local gossip.

“Terrible pot holes on route 27 this year.”

“Can you believe that communication tower on top of the mountain blew over in the wind?”

Jim checked his watch.

“How are we doing for time?” I asked.

“No problem,” he assured me. “Plenty of time.”

And with that we ordered another glass of wine.

By the time we returned home, the bread had risen…and fallen.

Was there mention of the word “over-proof” in that book, I wondered.

And so it went. Jim skied and baked while I wrote stories and hit the “send” button on my computer. He moved on to rye and oat bran recipes; I filed my rejections in the “SUBMISSIONS” folder and put it in the bottom drawer. And then on the day before we left for home, he returned to the light wheat recipe that had been so disastrous earlier in the season. He measured, mixed and timed. Read each direction and then read it again. The dough rose in the pans and he gave them a glistening egg white wash before setting them in the oven. They baked to a golden brown and sliced to reveal an airy texture inside.

Perfect. Loaves. Of. Bread.

Then in his matter-of-fact way, he cleaned up the kitchen and returned everything to the pantry. But before taking off his apron, he opened the freezer and took out two of his earlier breads: his not-so-perfect-for-one-reason-or-another attempts at baking. He lined up the three loaves, stood back, crossed his arms and smiled.

“Do you remember the post that Kate, your writing coach, sent to all of you awhile back?” he asked.

“Which one?”

“The one about how she believed that anyone could learn to write.”

“Yes, I do. She was talking about those of us who sometimes get lost. Lose faith in ourselves and our writing.”

“And what was her message?”

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and did a few shoulder rolls. “She said that if we were willing to put in the time and energy and work hard, we would learn and grow and strengthen our writing skills. We would get to be better writers.”

He paused. “That’s what I did with the bread. I wanted to be a baker. I practiced and failed and practiced some more. I know there were times when you probably thought I was crazy. And there were times when I wanted to give up, to just walk that baking book down the road to the dumpster. But I knew what I wanted.”

“I never thought you were crazy,” I replied. “Well, maybe just once or twice. You were just so obsessed, so determined about baking bread. And maybe I was a little jealous of your passion. That you were baking and I wasn’t writing.

“Hmmm,” he said.

The next morning we packed up the kitchen, emptied the fridge and threw our clothes into the old canvas Bean bag. The car was full and we were ready for another going home day. But this one was special: it was the end of our first winter of retirement in the mountains. We were headed back home, back to the land of Panera where bread’s ordered on-line, ready for a quick pick up.

Or maybe not. I opened the door to throw my jacket on the back seat and there on the floor was a box that I hadn’t packed. Inside? The scale, bags of flours and yeast, the pans and yes…the book. And as the car slowly headed down the spring-rutted road, I glanced at the back seat again. Maybe not, Panera. Maybe not.