Something from the Oven

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Daughter #1 follows at least two commercial bakeries which specialize in her favorite dessert—pie—on Instagram. When she was in St. George last, she made an extra 40 mile round trip to visit one of the bakeries in a tiny little town nearby. (And she brought home four different kinds of yummy pies to try!) Because she’s been working from home, this spring she decided to embark on a summer-long pie making adventure to see if she could replicate some of those picture-perfect pastries.

She started with piecrust, which is surprisingly difficult for a recipe with only 4 ingredients. (It took me about 30 years and creating my own recipe to get it right consistently.) Plus, she has to contend with her brother’s twin eight year-olds, four year-old daughter, and two year old son, all of whom have aprons just their sizes and ten small fingers, each grabbing at ingredients in every measuring cup and mixing bowl. (Then licking their fingers and trying to grab again.) So far, she’s mastered rhubarb pie—with or without strawberries, lemon crème (to die for), fresh peach, crème brûlée (she had to make a second batch of this pie–we devoured the first one so fast, she didn’t get a chance to do a proper evaluation), and now she’s working on pumpkin. Her efforts require everyone in the household to have pie two or three nights a week. We’re managing to suffer through.

Baking is not a new sport in my family. My dad’s mom was one of nineteen children. Her dad was a polygamist married to two sisters. They lived next door to each other in what, by all accounts, was an unusually happy arrangement. (My grandmother swore she was 12 before she was sure which mom was hers.) The family ran a large farm and, as the oldest child, my grandmother’s job was to make 22 loaves of bread every other morning for the ranch hands as well as the family. Even into her late 80’s, I’d watch her arthritic fingers punch and knead dough, shape it into beautiful rounded loaves, pop them in the oven, and slather butter across the tops of the loaves while they were still hot. My dad told me that their regular Sunday night bedtime snack was bread and warm milk in a cereal bowl. Until I tasted her bread, I thought he was being punished.

All of my sons can cook, and most of them make bread or rolls fairly regularly. When Son #6 decided to acquire baking skills, he had no interest in my walking him through the process. He pulled down one of my many cookbooks, read a dozen recipes, and settled on bagels! Authentic bagels–which required a whole series of complicated steps including boiling the dough before it’s baked. I was less than enthusiastic about this plan since he was only 9 years old, and I’d never in my life even considered trying to make bagels.

But stubborn is Son #6’s middle name, so he ignored my warnings, neatly sidestepping my attempts to divert his interest. I, in the interest of my own sanity, left the kitchen. Three hours or so later with my kitchen covered in a fine frost of flour and virtually every dish in my cupboards dirty, Son #6 presented me with a platter of slightly deformed rings which, when I sampled them, I have to admit were delicious. (I guess this is proof of his assertion that “if you can read, you can bake”.)

Now even football stars are taking a stab at baking in the time of quarantine–if you can believe the TV commercials. There’s a lot to be said for vigorously punching down a newly risen lump of dough–relieves tension and requires no follow-up intervention by a certified therapist. Plus, it’s cheap and you can eat the evidence.

While it’s true that Daughter #1 is a licensed therapist, the smell of fresh peach or pumpkin pie coming out of the oven can rival many a $200 an hour session in effectiveness for lifting a raft of troubled spirits.  Add a dollop of cream, a fork, and smiles lighting the faces at the table are guaranteed. That’s a pretty spectacular reward for an afternoon of soothing labor.